Dissertation (MMED General Surgery)
Burn injury is a significant health problem worldwide, where in Africa, it is estimated that over a million patients are burned annually, wherein in Tanzania, the prevalence is 16%. It contributes to 18% of all hospital admission, with a 6% mortality to 10% (Peden et al., 2008; Roman, Lewis, Kigwangalla, & Wilson, 2012). In addition, the common causes of early (less than 48 hours) mortality and morbidity in burn injury are; burns shock, inhalational injury, and systemic inflammatory response syndrome (Brusselaers et al., 2010). Therefore, burn management requires a strict protocol to reduce associated morbidity and mortality, which includes strict protocols of fluid resuscitation. In our settings, fluid management may not follow a strict prescription. And there are fewer studies on early resuscitation outcomes that have been done in Africa and Tanzania, but more importantly, not in our local settings.
A hospital-based, prospective study conducted at IRRH and DRRH from April 2019 to June 2020. This study used a purposeful sampling technique and questionnaire to collect data that was entered into the Excel sheet, then imported into SPSS version 26 for analysis. The mean ABSI score among survivors was 4.68 ± 0.18 and 10.67 ± 2.03 among non-survivors, mean TBSA among survivors were 25.07 ± 1.44 % and 71.67 ± 13.64 % among non-survivors. The risk factors contributing to the severity of burn injury are age above ten years, flames, and male patients who had more severe burn injuries. There was 49.1% patients who received inadequate amount of fluid, these patients were seven times likely to have the bad outcome (deteriorated or died), [AOR = 7.283, (95% CI 3.281 – 18.518), P < 0.05]. The common causes of burn injury in this study were scald followed by flames, of which flame injury contributed more to the severity of burn injury. There were 49.1% of the patients received inadequate fluid, and were 7 times more likely to have a bad outcome (deteriorated or died). ABSI score should be adapted in local setting and strict fluid resuscitation should be followed, especially to patients with ABSI score more than 6.