epidemiology of hospitalized patients in burn ward of imam khomeini hospital in urmia (2005)

introduction : burn injuries, in many ways, are considered to be one the most tragic events an individual can experience during his life. in particular, the iranian province of west azarbiajan provides one of the most dangerous sites, because of a very cold weather condition imposed by its harsh winters. this study is aimed to provide preventive measures for prevention and treatment of the complications. materials and methods : using hospital files, this cross-sectional study which was carried out in 2005 examined age, sex, burn surface area (bsa), length of hospital stay and case fatality of 639 patients admitted to imam khomeini hospital in urmia.  t test and spss software were used to analyze data.. results : from the total of 639 patients 310 (48.3%) were females and 329 (51.7%) were males. burning with flame accounted for 39.9% of admissions. the mean of age was 23.6 ± 0.4 years with a range of 1-81 years old. almost 31.8% of admissions were in the 16-25 years age group. the mean length of hospital stay was 7.76 (1-60) days and 21.7% of patients remained for longer than 10 days in hospital. overall case fatality was 25.9%. patients with <40% bsa burn had a mortality of 4.9%. the corresponding value for those with >40% bsa burn was 76.7%.   most of the cases had occurred in november (10.95%), july (9.54%) and february (9.23%). conclusion : results of the study will help to channel the health care efforts towards prevention and provides a valuable baseline to assess the future efforts. increasing the quality and quantity of emergency wards could increase the improvement of burn lesion which in turn will lead to the decrease in length of hospital stay.