Global burden of burns and its association with socio-economic development status, 1990-2019

Burns represent important global health problems. Whereas many studies are limited by the difficulties in estimating the burden of burns and instead focus on the causes of burns, such as fire, heat, and hot substances. Therefore, a complete assessment of the burden of all injuries leading to burns is essential to developing reasonable global intervention strategies.

Data on three classes of burns, including "< 20 % total burned surface area without lower airway burns" (Moderate injury), "> =20 % total burned surface area or > = 10 % burned surface area if head/neck or hands/wrist involved w/o lower airway burns" (Major injury), "Lower airway burns" (Inhalation injury) were collected from the Global Burden of Disease 2019 database. Age-standardized incidence rates (ASR-I) and Years Lived with Disability (ASR-YLDs) for burns has been standardized by removing the influence of population size and age structure. They were extracted and stratified by cause, year, sex, age, socio-demographic index, country, and territory.

In terms of ASR-I and ASR-YLDs, burns showed a significant decrease from 1990 to 2019, especially for moderate and major injury. In 2019, the burden of moderate injury was positively correlated with socio-demographic index while major injury was negatively correlated (P < 0.05). We found no correlation between socio-demographic index and the burden for inhalation injury (P > 0.05). Fire, heat, and hot substances were the most important cause of burns except for inhalation injury. The most common association with inhalation injury was falls, which were also a major cause of moderate and major injury.

The Global Burden of Disease 2019 database data can be used to guide the allocation of resources to reduce ASR-I and ASR-YLDs of different burn classes.