Etiology of Burn Injuries Among 0-6 Aged Children in One University Hospital Burn Unit, Bursa, Turkey

Background; Children whose verbal communications are not fully developed are the ones at risk for burn injuries. Causes of burn injuries vary among differ ent age groups and scald injuries are the common ca use of burn injuries among children. The majority of burns e ult from contact with thermal agents such as fl me, hot surfaces, or hot liquids. Aim: The aim of this study was to determine etiologic f a tors of the burn injured children Methods: Data were collected for burn injured children treat ed in Uludag University Medical Hospital Burn Unit between January 2001 – December 2008. Patients ’ demographic variables, etiology of burn injury, T BSA (total body surface area), degree of the burn injur y, duration of hospitalization was detected from me dical records of the hospitalized patients. Results: The mean age of the children was 2.5±1.5 (median=2) . Although 4.6 % of burned patients were under one year of age, most of the children (67.8%) were between 1-3 years. All of the patients were burned as a result of accident and house environment was the place whe re the burn incident occurred. Burn injuries occurr ed mostly during summer (29.9%) and spring (28.7%). Sc ald injuries (75.3%) were mostly seen burn injury types all among other burn injuries. Conclusions: Lack of supervision and observation are usually the most common causes of burn injuries in children. Statistical differences were found among age groups according to their burn etiology (p<0.05 ). An effect of TBSA on patient survival was statisticall y significant (p<0.000) and also statistically significant result were seen among age groups according to their TBSA’ s (p<0.005).