EPIDEMIOLOGY AND OUTCOME OF ELECTRIC BURN WOUND PATIENT ADMITTED IN A TERTIARY LEVEL HOSPITAL

Dr. Milan Kumar Saha*, Dr. Md. Zahangir Alam, Dr. Md. Bani Amin, Dr. Joyanti Biswas and Dr. Most. Fatema Khatun

ABSTRACT

Background: Electrical injury is the 4th most common cause of burn which continues to be one of the most distressing trauma injuries in developing countries. The epidemiological characteristics of electric burns vary widely throughout the world. Therefore, accurate understanding of the epidemiological characteristics of electric burns is necessary for strategic planning of effective prevention programs and management. Considering the shortage of literatures, the study was designed to evaluate the epidemiology characteristics and outcome of electrical burn injury patients admitted in a tertiary level hospital. Methods: This hospital based prospective cross-sectional study was conducted at the department of Burn and Plastic surgery in Khulna Medical College Hospital (KMCH), for six months of period following approval of this protocol. All burn patients will be screened and finally selected in according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Written informed consent were taken from the subject and ethical issues were ensured according to Helsinki declaration. In this study, total 90 individual were interviewed. Data were collected by researcher himself focusing sociodemographic profile (e.g. age, sex, etc.), cause and severity of injury, outcome, and hospital stay. Data were registered, documented and analyzed in the statistical program Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 22.0. The data were systematically described and summarized and presented through descriptive statistics and expressed by graph and chart whichever is relevant. Results: Mean age of the study populations was 43.57±16.43 SD (years) [age range 18-80 years] with male predominance (95.6% male vs 4.4% females). Most of them were construction workers (43.3%) followed by electrician (16.7%) and service holder (11.1%). The extent of burn per mean body surface area (BSA) was found to be 19.87±18.3%. The range was 1% to 60%, the median was 16% BSA. Eighty four percent of patients were affected by high voltage electricity (>1000 V) and only sixteen percent were affected by low voltage (<1000 V) power supply and injury were higher in high voltage electricity exposure (p<0.05). Superior extremities were more affected with hand (23.3%) and fingers (18.9%) being the main point of contact (p < 0.0001). Foot (14.4%) was more affected in inferior extremities, and in 7.8% of patients other regions were involved (head, thorax, abdomen). Of all, 43.33% (39) patients required intervention by either sloughtectomy, fasciotomy, or skin graft. The mean hospital stays were 16.6±12.9 days with a range of one to 55 days. Among the participants (n=90), 21.1% were cured without complications, similar percentage of patients developed scar, 15% patients developed any form of deformity. Moreover, 30% patients referred to ICU and overall mortality rate was 12.2% (n=11). Conclusion: Electrical burn was more prominent in male patients which showed variable outcome in our setting.

Keywords: Electric Burn, epidemiology characteristics, fasciotomy, skin graft.