Multi-variate analysis of burns patients in the Singapore General Hospital Burns Centre (2003–2005)
Introduction
The Burns Centre at the Singapore General Hospital (SGH) serves as a tertiary referral centre for burns management for Singapore’s 4 million residents as well as the Southeast Asia region. This is demonstrated by the centre receiving 93% of all burns patients in Singapore [1] as well as the management of patients from Bali (Bali bomb blasts in October 2002 and March 2005), Jakarta (August 2003) and Taiwan (May 2007).
There have been previous analyses of the burns patients in SGH. Lee [2] recounted two decades of burns care from 1962 to 1982 and studied the epidemiology of burns patients admitted between 1973 and 1977. Ngim [3] reported on the epidemiology of paediatric patients admitted between 1978 and 1988. In addition, Khoo et al. [4] studied the epidemiology of burns patients between 1992 and 1993. Song and Chua [1] also analysed the epidemiology of burn injuries from 1997 to 2003.
The aim of this paper is to do a multivariate analysis of all burns patients admitted between 2003 and 2005. In addition to the epidemiological details, length of stay and clinical outcomes, we also analyse the resource requirements from the various disciplines in the management of burns patients, the surgical requirements and its impact, dressing requirements as well as a preliminary bacteriological study of the Burns Centre.
Section snippets
Materials and methods
A retrospective descriptive study was performed for the entire cohort of 482 patients admitted to SGH between the periods of 1 January 2003 to 31 December 2005. The attending plastic surgeon is the same for all the patients. Of note, there were around 50 patients excluded from the study as they had been admitted only for overnight observation for suspected electrical injury or smoke inhalation.
The variables of clinical histories were obtained from the admission records, computerized record
Admissions and gender
The average annual admission for the study population was 161. This represents a low incidence of 0.04 per 1000 admissions for the Singapore population. The male:female population ratio was 1.9:1.
There were 418 adults and 64 children in the study. Among adults, the male:female ratio was 2.1:1. The difference was more marked for foreign adults, with a male:female ratio of 4.58:1. In children, the male:female ratio was 1.2:1.
Monthly admissions
The monthly admissions for 2003–2005 are summarized in Fig. 1. There are
Discussion
The Burns Centre at SGH is the only dedicated facility to provide specialized burn care in Singapore. To our knowledge, our study is the most detailed analysis of burns patients in Singapore, including the resource requirements, surgical requirements, dressing requirements as well as a preliminary bacteriological study.
Our study’s male:female ratio for burn patients of 1.9:1 is reduced when compared to previous studies [1] but still demonstrated continued male predominance [1], [2], [3]. This
Conflict of interest statement
None declared.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Ms. Stephanie Fook Chong for her help in analysing the data. We would also like to thank Mr. Lim Yu Jin Jordan for his excellent technical assistance.
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