Burn injury: A Take Home Message

Burn injury: A Take Home Message

By : dr. I Gst Pt Hendra Sanjaya, SpB, SpBP-RE(K)

Burn injury can occur anywhere, especially for those who work related to heat sources such as factory workers who use fire or electricity, chef and so on. It can also occur at home due to accidental events such as being exposed to hot water or oil while cooking, exploding gas cylinders, electrocuted when repairing electricity, or inhaling burning chemicals. The damage caused by burns also varies depending on the depth of the wound, area, and location. For this reason, knowledge of first aid in burn injury is very important in order to prevent complications such as disability or even death for burn sufferers.

Skin damage caused by burn injury are susceptible to infection, because skin is the body's initial defense, so treatment must be done quickly and correctly. Burn injury treatment are depends on the area and depth of the burn. By depth, it can be divided into three degrees:

Burn injuries that only affect the outer skin, symptoms like redness will appear on the skin followed by pain on the affected area (e.g. sunbathing). This degree are often called sun burn. Healing at this level normally occurs spontaneously within 5-10 days.

On the deeper skin injury, it can be marked by the appearance of bubble like appearance on the skin which contains fluid, reddish skin color with severe pain. If handled improperly, it can cause various complications such as infections, contractures and so on.

If the area affected by burns experience symptoms such as dry skin, gray to black skin color, unable to feel pain or numbness, that means the damage had occurs at all depths of the skin to deeper organs including muscles to bones.

Other factors such as the area of the burn injury and location also significantly affect the recovery rate of the victim. For example, if burn injury occur in the joint or face area it require more intensive medical care. In addition, burns on the face with respiratory symptoms such as cough or shortness of breath can be fatal because it can quickly make the victim experience airway obstruction, or death.

Burns due to electricity require immediate evaluation treatment in the hospital because electric burn often interferes the heart rhythms that can be life threatening

So, what can we do if there is burn victim?

1. Extinguish the fire from the victim's body and keep him/her away from the fire source, immediately take off the victim’s clothes from the burned skin.

2. Cool the burn injury area by keep it in running water for 20 minutes (at normal temperature, ideally 15ºC). This method is effective up to 3 hours after injury.

3. Cover the burn injury’s area using a clean cloth and do not break the bubbles if appear.

4. Do not use cold water or ice to press on the wound area because it will cause further tissue damage.

5. The use of toothpaste, margarine or soy sauce on the burn area proved to be ineffective and can even cause infection.

6. Bring the victim immediately to the nearest health facility.