April 2015 Vol. 3 No. 4

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Original Research Article

Epidemiology of contact Burns

¹Seyed-Abolhassan Emami M. D., ²*Hamid Karimi M. D. and ³Abolhassan Alijanpour M. D.

¹Associate professor in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
²Associate professor in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
³Assistant Professor of General Surgery, Fellowship of Burns, Faculty of Medicine, Babol University of Medical Sciences, Babol, Iran

*Corresponding Author’s Email: hamidkarimi1381@yahoo.com/karimihamid11@gmail.com
Tel: + 98 912 3179089
Fax: + 98 21 88770048

Accepted March 30, 2015

Abstract

Contact burns are one of the most prevalent burns all over the world. It is one of the major causes of burns in specialized burn centers. Carelessness and not using the safety measures would result in contact burns which are usually of deep III and IV degree burns and would have many complications. We prospectively surveyed all of the contact burn patients who came to our hospital during last 5 years. Most of them were burns with hot metals, especially hot exhaust of the motorcycles. Age, sex, demographic data, length of stay, mode of treatment, result of treatment and outcomes were inserted in a special questionnaire and data was analyzed with SPSS 19. P values less than 0.05% was considered significant. During 5 years we had 4302 burn patients, of them 96 patients had contact burn (2.2%). 55.2% were male and 44.8% were female. Mean age was 40 years (from 9-80 years old). All had III and IV degree burns. Mean age for men was 26 years old and mean age for women was 44 years old. 36 patients had contact burn with hot pipe of exhaust of the motorcycles. Of them 55.5% were male and 44.5% were female. And all of these burns were in inner side of the legs. Percentage of burn was from 1 to 3 % and all of them were treated with early excision and skin grafts. Length of stay was from 1-5 days. And after that patients were discharged and they went back to work after 3 weeks, we had only one hematoma and one infection in the graft site with partial skin loss. All of female patients were seated in the back seat of the motorcycle. Contact burn is usually of deep nature and almost all of them can be treated early with early skin graft. And the result are excellent and without keloids or hypertrophic scar. Loss of work force is minimal with early excision and grafting.

Keywords: Burns, Complication, Contact, Early excision, Exhaust burn, Hot pipe burn