Clinico-epidemiological profile of burns cases admitted to a tertiary care hospital in a coastal area of South India.

ABSTRACT

Background: Globally, approximately 2.5 lakh deaths occur every year, with majority of cases from low and middle income countries. Burns is one of the major cause of mortality and morbidity in India with around a million people affected by burns every year. This study has been aimed to study the socio-demographic profile of burn patients and also to evaluate the etiology, manner, and circumstances of occurrence of burn injuries along with their outcome. Methods: This record based retrospective study was conducted Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore Records were analyzed and information related to socio-demographic details, etiology of burns, place of burn, manner of burns were extracted. Data was entered and analyzed using SPSS version 11.5. Results: The study included 154 participants. Majority of the participants were in the age group of 21-30years (n=50, 32.5%) followed by 31-40 years (n=35, 22.7%).More than half of the participants were females (n=84, 55%). When the etiology for burns were analyzed most of the cases were due to scalds (n=64, 41.5%) followed by flames (n=n=58, 37%). More than three fourth of the burn cases were accidental in nature (n=128, 83.1%) followed by suicidal burns (n=22, 14.2%) Conclusions: Even in the era of technological advancement burns still remains as a major issue of concern in most of the developing countries including India. It