TO THE EDITOR: Alkali drain cleaner has previously been reported to cause oral, oesophageal and cutaneous burns. 1-4 The risk of these cleaners causing full thickness cutaneous burns in children needs to be emphasised. Two toddlers recently presented to our hospital with severe burns after exposure to alkali drain cleaning products. An 18-month-old boy opened the box and bit open the silver foi...

The authors reviewed the domestic chemical injury experience in two major government hospitals in Saudi Arabia to determine the most common causative agents and the circumstances of the injury in order to give recommendations for their prevention and reduction of their morbidity. A total of 59 cases were included. The mean age was 25 years and the male to female ratio was 3:1. Alkali drain clea...

Hairdressing-related burns are preventable and therefore each case is one too many. We report a unique case of a 16-yr-old girl who suffered full-thickness chemical and thermal burns to the nape of her neck and superficial burns to the occiput after her hair had been dyed blond and placed under a dryer to accelerate the highlighting procedure. The wound on the nape of the neck required surgical...

From 1978 to 1987 107 cases of chemical burns were treated. The patients were mainly young and middle age people (83.08%), with mean burned areas 17.8%. The majority of involved parts were low extremities. 57.44% of burned eyes became blind. Mean days in hospital were 43 days. Cure rate was 98.13% and death rate 1.87%. We emphasized that burned wounds must instantly be washed down with water, i...