Epidemiological and bacteriological profile of burn patients at Nepal Medical College Teaching Hospital

This study was conducted to know the epidemiological and bacteriological profile of burn patients at Nepal Medical College Teaching Hospital. The charts of 50 burn patients admitted in department of surgery were reviewed retrospectively. All the epidemiological characteristics, mode of injury, time taken to reach hospital and involved body surface areas were noted. The charts were also reviewed for bacterial isolates from burn wounds and its sensitivity pattern for various antibiotics. Data was analyzed using the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) for Windows. The mean age of patients was 31.8 years with male:female ratio of 1.3:1. Half of the patients were from Kathmandu. Fifty two percent of patients directly came to our hospital while rests were referred from other hospitals. The average time taken to reach hospital was 11.3 hours. Those patients who were referred from outside the valley took longer time (p = 0.002). Flame burn was the leading cause for injury (66.0%) followed by scald burn (16.0%), electric burn (14.0%) and acid burn (4.0%). Staphylococcus aureus (28.0%) was the commonest organism isolated from wound swab culture. Others were Klebsiella (16.0%), Pseudomonas (13.0%), Proteus (13.0%) and E.coli (13.0%). No growth was noted in 17.0% of patients. During the treatment, 14.0% of patients died and 4.0% left against medical advice. Remaining patients were discharged after complete recovery. Body surface area involvement was found to be a significant predictor of mortality (p < 0.001) and the length of hospital stay was significantly low for them (p = 0.05).