A severe systemic inflammatory response is usually seen after burn injury. IL-18 enhances the Th1 immune responses in bacterial andviral infections. In order to evaluate the IL-18 serum levels as well as IL-6 and TNF-alpha at the 48th hour postburn, serial serum samples of 8 burned patients were analyzed. 8 moderately burned patients were included into the study. Serum samples were taken at adm...

The loss of plasma from dilated and injured capillaries may be disastrous in several ways. One of these, the systemic effect, is so widely appreciated as to have dominated physiological thinking in the treatment of burns almost to the exclusion of other principles very vital to efficient v therapy. There can be no doubt that reduction in plasma volume by leakage from abnormal capillaries in bur...

Elevated metabolic rate is a hallmark of the stress response to severe burn injury. This response is mediated in part by adrenergic stress and is responsive to changes in ambient temperature. We hypothesize that uncoupling of oxidative phosphorylation in skeletal muscle mitochondria contributes to increased metabolic rate in burn survivors. Here, we determined skeletal muscle mitochondrial func...

Infectious complications are reported frequently in combat trauma patients treated at military hospitals. Infections in 4566 noncombat related trauma patients treated at a military trauma center were retrospectively reviewed from 1/2003 to 5/2007 using registry data. Burns, penetrating, and blunt trauma accounted for 17%, 19%, and 64%, respectively; the median age was 38 and 22% were female. Pu...

We use the Global Multi-resolution Terrain Elevation Data 2010 (GMTED, 7.5 arc-seconds) and Landsat Maps Global Surface Water (GSW, 1 arc-seconds) processed by GRASS-GIS hydrological modules to derive a fully standardized stream network. The GSW water occurrence was burned into the GMTED surface to force the drainage direction, thereby directing the stream network to pass through the observed w...

Recent suggestions that patients "hopelessly burned" be permitted to die peacefully have refocused attention on the accuracy of different methods of predicting whether an individual burn patient will survive. The purpose of this presentation is to compare the accuracy of mortality predictions based upon four different statistical methods: (1) Baux's rule which adds the patient's age in years to...

We evaluated the accurate fluid requirement to prevent respiratory failure during the postresuscitation period in the resuscitation of massively burned children without inhalation injury. Forty-nine children were treated by similar fluid resuscitation and physiologic support protocols. Using a retrospective chart review, the children were divided into three groups as follows: Group N (no lung i...

BACKGROUND Hyperglycemia is associated with increased mortality in the severely injured; intensive insulin protocols reduce mortality, improve wound healing, and decrease susceptibility to infection. High glucose variability creates challenges to glycemic control and may be a marker of poor outcome. We wondered whether glycemic variability alone might identify patients at higher risk of death. ...

BACKGROUND A burn injury can be a traumatic experience with tremendous social, physical, and psychological consequences. The aim of this study was to investigate the existence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and predictors of PTSD Checklist score initially and 3 months after injury in burns victims admitted to the Sina Burn Center in north-west Iran. METHODS This prospective study ex...

BACKGROUND Accurate determination of the depth of burn injury is difficult, even for experienced surgeons. The authors hypothesized that the level of plasma free hemoglobin following burn injury is correlated to the depth of burn injury, and they evaluated this hypothesis in a murine model. METHODS Full-thickness and partial-thickness burn injuries of varying sizes were inflicted on 38 and 36...