Objective: Describe the epidemiological characteristics of severe burn patients and analyze the factors related with morbidity-mortality.
Design and scope: Observational, retrospective study of patients admitted to an intensive care unit of a level III hospital due to severe burns from January 1998 to December 2004.
Patients: 59 patients with criteria of "severe burn" and expected stay in ICU greater than three days. MAIN ENDPOINTS OF INTEREST: We studied epidemiological endpoints of this type of patients, diagnosis and initial treatment, early complications and morbidity-mortality.
Results: The burned body surface was 41% +/- 25% and age 49 +/- 21 years. Patients remained hospitalized in ICU for a median of 4 days (interquartile range: 2-19). A total of 78% of the patients needed mechanical ventilation, 47% had some infection during admission and 28% developed acute kidney failure during the first week. Mortality in the ICU was 42%. Endpoints associated independently with a significant increase of mortality were burned body surface greater than 35% (OR 1.08; 95% CI: 1.03-1.12) and development of kidney failure (OR 5.47; 95% CI: 2.02 -8.93).
Conclusions: Mortality of these patients is very high and is conditioned largely by initial care. Percentage of burned body surface (BBS) and kidney failure entails greater mortality in our series.