- 學位論文
Burned Patients in a Taiwanese medical center: a five-year utilization study
Burned Patients in a Taiwanese medical center: a five-year utilization study
並列摘要
Title of Thesis: Burned Patients in a Taiwanese Medical Center: a five-year epidemiology study Author: Dr Nadjy Joseph Thesis advised by: Chung-Chien Huang BACKGROUND: A burn injury is a disastrous trauma that can have wide-ranging impacts on burn patients and profound consequences for their families. A devastating injury that can cause severe impact in a human life such as permanent disfigurement, psychological morbidity, physical dysfunction and even death. During the past 50 years, the chances of survival after burn injury have increased substantially. At the end of World War II, only 50 percent of patients with 40 percent of their total body-surface area burns have survived. Today over 50 percent of all patients with 80 percent of their total body-surface area burns may survive. Why this remarkable success? Because of the therapeutic developments: fluid resuscitation, the new therapeutic decision such as an early excision of burn wounds, research in critical care and nutrition, the usage and application of topical and systemic antibiotics. The evolution of specialized and multidisciplinary burn centers has his role in this big improvement. Today, burn care has changed considerably. All this new way of management of the burn patient (early surgery, nutritional support, novel skin replacement techniques) are well established. METHODS: This study described the epidemiological characteristics of a retrospective cohort of 137 admitted burn patients in a Taiwanese Medical Center. The data was from the medical record of those patients in the years from January 2006 to December 2010 RESULTS: This descriptive study includes 78 male and 59 females with a male to female ratio of 1.39:1 and an average age of 43 years. The leading type of burn injury was scalding followed by burn caused by flame then other types of burn; electric, contact and chemical burn have the less patients suffered from them. The mean percent total body surface area (TBSA) for adults was 0.51 with 94 patients having 0-9% TBSA. Adults with more than 50 years old and between 40 and 49 years old are two high-risk groups for burn injuries. The average length of hospital stay was less than 10 days. CONCLUSION: Adequate and better care of the burned patients is the most effective way to reduce hospital complications, shorten the length of stay, decreases the medical resources utilization (MRU), improve the quality of life and enhance survival. These results showed the unique distributions that reflected the social, economic and cultural background of Taiwan.