Rehabilitation of burn patients: an underestimated socio-economic burden.

PURPOSE: Patients with burns utilise intensive medical care and rehabilitation. Deep dermal burns lead to scar contractures. Virtually no published data exists on costs for treatment of acute burns in comparison to burn sequelae. Our purpose was to collect financial data on burn therapy to estimate the socio-economic burden of thermal injuries. METHODS: German-DRG for in-patient treatment of burns was collected from our burn center. DRG-related T95.- coding served as a search tool for burn associated sequelae. To include rehabilitation costs, data from the largest health care insurance and a workmen compensation fund were acquired. FINDINGS: Acute burn treatment comprised 92% of costs for intensive care with approximately 4.600 EUR per percent total burned surface area (TBSA). Expenses for non-intensive care patients were significantly lower than for burn sequelae. Rehabilitation expenses were 4.4-fold higher than costs for acute burns including 59% for manual therapy and 37% for auxiliary material. CONCLUSIONS: TBSA multiplied by factor 4600 could serve for cost calculation of severely burned patients. Approximately 0.3 billion EUR in total or 270.000 EUR per patient/year were spent on burn sequelae. Early admission to specialized burn centers is advocated with state-of-the-art treatment to minimize burn sequelae and health care expenses.