Conservative treatment of deep partial thickness hand burns--a long term audit of outcome

Fourteen patients with 23 burned hands assessed as deep partial thickness were studied. Fourteen (61%) hands re-epithelialised within 3 weeks. A detailed hand assessment at a mean of 19 months post-injury was carried out. The functional outcome compared favourably with a group of matched normal controls. There was no statistically significant functional difference between the 7 late grafted hands and the 16 spontaneously healed hands except for total passive motion. Seventeen (74%) hands were considered by the patients to be functionally as good as before the injury.