Systematic review of physical and psychosocial problems of burned children aged 5 years and below after discharge

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Objective: To summarize the physical and psychosocial problems of burned children aged 0 to 5 years so as to explore their demands of care after discharge. Methods: Databases including Embase, PubMed, PsycARTICLES, and CINAHL Complete were searched using key words " child(*,) infant(*,) toddler, preschool, kid, baby, junior, burn, scald, empyrosis, nursing, care" , and Chinese Journals Full-text Database, China Biology Medicine disc, and VIP Database were searched using key words in Chinese version ",,,,,,,," to obtain the articles about physical and psychosocial health-related problems of burned children aged 0 to 5 years after discharge from the establishment of each database to February 2018. After screening of extracted articles, the physical and psychosocial problems of burned children aged 0 to 5 years after discharge and psychosocial problems of their caregivers were summarized. Results: (1) A total of 3 880 articles were obtained, after screening layer by layer, 9 English articles were finally included, including 4 prospective observational studies, 3 cross-sectional studies, 1 cohort study, and 1 case-control study, with 1 high-quality literature and 8 medium-quality literatures. (2) After discharge, burned children aged 0 to 5 years mainly had physical problems such as pain, itching, fine motor developmental disorders, and gross motor developmental disorders. They had psychosocial problems such as negative emotional behavior, delayed language development, affected game interaction, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and disrupted family life. The caregivers had psychosocial problems such as worrying about the appearance and the future of children, dissatisfaction with the current status of children, anxiety and depression, pain, and PTSD. The influencing factors of the above health problems were post-discharge time, post-injury time, total burn area, and burn site, etc. There were 12 kinds of measuring tools used in this group to evaluate the health problems of burned children and psychosocial problems of their caregivers. Only the burn outcomes questionnaire for children aged 0 to 5 years was developed for burned children aged 0 to 5 years. Conclusions: After discharge, burned children aged 0 to 5 years still face many physical and psychosocial problems, which are influenced by factors such as post-discharge time, post-injury time, total burn area and burn site, which suggests that there are certain care needs for them. Appropriate tools for evaluating the health problems of burned children aged 0 to 5 years should be developed.