Long-term Physical Symptoms Persist in Adult Burn Survivors: A Call to Action

Research Objectives: To describe and quantify the prevalence of long-term physical symptoms burn survivors experience

Design: Prospective cohort study of adult burn survivors with data collection at 6 months and 24 months after burn injury

Setting: Data was gathered from the Burn Model System (BMS) National database, comprised of four large burn centers that provide multidisciplinary medical and rehabilitative care for burn patients in the emergency, acute, post-acute, and long-term settings.

Participants: The population is a subset of the BMS National database; adults with moderate to severe burn injuries who received care at one of the 4 BMS burn centers. This subset includes those who responded to symptom related questions at 6 months from burn injury (n=791) and at 24 months from burn injury (n=579). There were 212 individuals who died or were lost to follow up between 6 months post-injury and 24 months post-injury. A literature review of studies looking at prevalence rates of symptoms (those recorded in the BMS database and reported in this study) was carried out to compare this burn survivor population with other adult populations, when possible.

Interventions: n/a

Main Outcome Measures: Self-reported presence of physical symptoms in adult burn survivors, at 6 and 24 months from serious burn injury, including varicose veins, swollen feet or legs, swollen hands or arms, difficulty breathing, skin cancer, joint pain, venous thromboembolism, cold intolerance, excessive sweating, difficulty in hot environments, and skin sensitivity.

Results: The most prevalent long-term symptom among the cohort was skin sensitivity with 74% (339/461) answering “Yes” at 6 months and 64% (199/311) at 24 months. Out of the 11 symptoms observed in this study, 6 of the symptoms’ prevalence rates from this cohort were able to be compared to prevalence rates from other adult populations gathered from literature review. Chi-square tests were used to determine if differences in symptom prevalence between the adult burn survivor population and other populations were significant. Out of the comparisons of 6 of the symptoms, burn survivors experienced the following symptoms at a significantly increased rate than the comparison populations at both 6 and 24 months (all p< 0.001),: difficulty breathing, joint pain, cold intolerance, and excessive sweating; and at 6 months: swollen feet or legs (p < 0.001).

Conclusions: This study demonstrates that survivors of serious burns have long-lasting physical symptoms after burn injury, oftentimes at greater rates than other populations.

Author(s) Disclosures: Content of this abstract were developed under National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research grant number 90DPBU0009.