Abstract
IntroductionBurn injury is a serious pathology, potentially leading to severe morbidity and significant mortality, but it also has a considerable health-economic impact. The aim of this study was to describe the European hospitalized population with severe burn injury, including the incidence, etiology, risk factors, mortality, and causes of death.MethodsThe systematic literature search (1985 to 2009) involved PubMed, the Web of Science, and the search engine Google. The reference lists and the Science Citation Index were used for hand searching (snowballing). Only studies dealing with epidemiologic issues (for example, incidence and outcome) as their major topic, on hospitalized populations with severe burn injury (in secondary and tertiary care) in Europe were included. Language restrictions were set on English, French, and Dutch.ResultsThe search led to 76 eligible studies, including more than 186,500 patients in total. The annual incidence of severe burns was 0.2 to 2.9/10,000 inhabitants with a decreasing trend in time. Almost 50% of patients were younger than 16 years, and ~60% were male patients. Flames, scalds, and contact burns were the most prevalent causes in the total population, but in children, scalds clearly dominated. Mortality was usually between 1.4% and 18% and is decreasing in time. Major risk factors for death were older age and a higher total percentage of burned surface area, as well as chronic diseases. (Multi) organ failure and sepsis were the most frequently reported causes of death. The main causes of early death (<48 hours) were burn shock and inhalation injury.ConclusionsDespite the lack of a large-scale European registration of burn injury, more epidemiologic information is available about the hospitalized population with severe burn injury than is generally presumed. National and international registration systems nevertheless remain necessary to allow better targeting of prevention campaigns and further improvement of cost-effectiveness in total burn care.
Highlights
Burn injury is a serious pathology, potentially leading to severe morbidity and significant mortality, but it has a considerable health-economic impact
The Human Development Index (HDI) Ranking is a classification of all countries worldwide based on life expectancy, literacy, education, and standards of living
Higher numbers are related to a higher development index (*a ’high’ HDI, **b ’very high’ HDI)
Summary
Burn injury is a serious pathology, potentially leading to severe morbidity and significant mortality, but it has a considerable health-economic impact. The aim of this study was to describe the European hospitalized population with severe burn injury, including the incidence, etiology, risk factors, mortality, and causes of death. Burn injury is a common type of traumatic injury, causing considerable morbidity and mortality. Burns are among the most expensive traumatic injuries, because of long hospitalization and rehabilitation, and costly wound and scar treatment [1,2]. Whether inpatient treatment in States (based on hospital admissions and death registers) and are responsible for 1.6% of the traumatic deaths [10]. The aim of this study was to summarize the available European epidemiologic data, based on scientific studies in international journals, instead of (often inaccurate) nationwide estimates
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