Central nervous system complications of thermal burns. A postmortem study of 139 patients

We report a retrospective, clinicopathologic study of 139 patients who died during treatment of a severe burn. Fifty-three percent of the patients had central nervous system (CNS) complications-infections, cerebral infarcts and hemorrhages, metabolic encephalopathies, central pontine myelinolysis, and cerebral trauma. Children and adults were equally affected. Sixteen percent of the patients had a CNS infection. Candida species, Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa caused almost 80% of them. S. aureus and candida caused cerebral microabscesses and septic infarcts. P. aeruginosa caused meningitis and infarcts due to meningitis. CNS infections arose as a result of spread from a systemic source. The major risk factors for CNS infection were an extensive burn, S. aureus endocarditis, and a burn wound infection due to candida or P. aeruginosa. Patients with burns of less than 30% of the surface area of their body, those without a systemic infection, and those in the first week after their burn were at low risk. Eighteen percent of the patients had cerebral infarcts. In almost half the patients, the infarcts were caused by septic arterial occlusions or other complications of the burn, viz, disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) and septic shock. In only one-third of the patients were infarcts due to atherosclerosis, atrial fibrillation, or other causes prevalent in the general population. Intracranial hemorrhages were only one-fifth as frequent as infarcts and were due to DIC and thrombocytopenia, caused by bacteremia. Diagnosis during life was difficult, because the neurologic picture of focal cerebral lesions and meningitis was indistinguishable from that of metabolic encephalopathies, and because many patients had more than 1 neurologic complication. However, our results suggest that a clinical approach that includes analysis of risk factors for CNS infection, cerebral imaging, examination of cerebrospinal fluid, and tests for DIC can lead to a neurologic and microbiologic diagnosis in most patients.