Epidemiology of burn injury among children’s attended felege hiwot referral hospital in bahir dar town, amhara regional state, Ethiopia, 2017

Abstract

Background: Burn injury is a major global public health problem accompanied by a high risk of mortality and morbidity. Sufficient knowledge in the epidemiological pattern is necessary to prevent burn injury, but in many developing countries, including Ethiopia, the epidemiological patterns of burn injuries given low attention. Methods: The institutional-based retrospective cross-sectional study design was conducted from March-April 2017. A total of 102 burn patients were selected in a simple random sampling method. Data were collected retrospectively from patients’ medical records using a data extraction tool among children’s attended Felege Hiwot referral hospital with burn injury from 2011 to 2016. Data were cleaned, coded, and entered in Epi-data version 3.1, then exported to Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 21 for analysis. Result: The overall prevalence of burn injury among children was 0.46%. In all age groups, the prevalence of burn injury was higher among females. Scald burn injuries account for 42.2%, and 41.61% of burn injuries involved multiple body parts. The majority of children (75.5%) presented with second-degree burns, and the mean TBSA (total body surface area) burned was 12.56 ±8.91. The majority of patients (77.5%) seek health care within <24 hours, 35.3% of patients received prehospital care after burn injury, and 33.3% of patients recovered with significant scarring and disfigurement. Conclusion and recommendations: The majority of the burn injuries occurred at home, and pre-hospital interventions were mostly harmful practices. Therefore adequate health education should be delivered to the society regarding appropriate pre-hospital interventions and a safe home environment.