Electrical burns--incidence and prognosis in Western Scotland

A 10-year review of all patients admitted to the West of Scotland Regional Burns Unit with serious electrical burns indicated an incidence of only 2.6 cases per million of the population served by the Unit per year. Injuries following electrocution or electric flash, but excluding injuries caused by grasping the hot heating element of an electric fire, were suffered by 70 patients, 52 of whom sustained electrocution which was not immediately fatal. Ninety-one per cent of the patients were male. The patients who died in hospital did so as a result of sepsis rather than as a direct result of the electrical injury. All those patients who had ECG changes on admission recovered completely. In view of the very deep injuries, the amputation rate was high with 12 out of 52 patients (23 per cent) with electrocution injury requiring one or more amputations. The events preceding the serious electrical injury in our patients suggest that, 57 per cent of all the injuries could have been prevented, and in patients under 20 years of age this percentage rose to 91.