The Effects of Burn Size, Age, Inhalation Injury and Burn Depth on the Mortality of Major Burn Patients

Abstract

An 8-years retrospective review of major burn patients hospitalization at burn Center, Veterans General Hospital Taipei, was conducted to determine the relative effect of burn size, age, burn depth and inhalation injury. We used two new burn severity model; Burn Index (BI=burn size of third degree×1+burn size of second degree×1/2) and Prognostic Burn Index (PBI=BI+age) in our report. In 141 major burn patients (total burn size＞25%), the overall mortality was 33.3% (47 of 141). The presence of inhalation injury, increasing total burn surface area (TBSA), advanced age and increased BI were all associated with mortality (p＜0.0l). The incidence of inhalation injury was 41.8% (59 of 141). We found that the most important factor in predicting mortality was PBI and followed by BI by using logistic regression analysis.