Achievements and challenge of treatment of electric burn over the past 50 years in China / 中华烧伤杂志

ABSTRACT

The electric burn is a kind of special injury, in which the injured areas are not big, but deep tissues and organs are often injured, resulting in higher rates of mortality and amputation than thermal injury. In the process of management, besides the treatment for systemic and pathologic changes, wound repair is also emphasized for restoration of function. In the past 50 years, ten thousand patients with electric burn were cured in our country, including hundreds of severe electric burn patients with extensive injury. Lots of operative regimes for electric burn were developed, and the scope of experimental research was broadening. As a result, six monographs concerning electric burns were published. However, clinical management of severe electric burn to give a satisfactory result is still difficult, therefore further indepth research is necessary, especially in the field of the use of artificial skin, vessels, nerves, muscular tendon, etc. from gene and tissue engineering to improve quality of wound repair.