A scoping review of burn care in Southeast Asia

Non-fatal burns are a major cause of morbidity, with incidents often occuring at home and at work. Almost all burn cases occur in the WHO region, precisely in African and Southeast Asian countries. Yet, the epidemiology of these injuries, especially in the WHO-defined Southeast Asian Region, has yet to be adequately defined.

A scoping review of the literature was performed to identify epidemiology of thermal, chemical, and electrical burns in the WHO-defined Southeast Asian Region. The database search screened 1023 articles in total, of which 83 articles were assessed for eligibility at a full-text level, and 58 of these were excluded. Therefore, 25 full-text articles were included for data extraction and analysis.

Data analysed included demographics, injury details, burn mechanism, total body surface area burned, and in-hospital mortality.

Despite the steady increase on burns research, the Southeast Asian region is still limited in terms of burns data. This scoping review has shown that the largest set of articles on burns come from Southeast Asia, indicating the importance of reviewing data at a regional or local level, as global studies tend to be dominated by data from high-income countries.