Global Wound Care Congress

Biography

Biography: Bipin Puri

Abstract

Burn injury is a dreaded scourge the world over and indeed is fairly commonly tackled by the military surgeon. While superficial burn wounds heal spontaneously, the deep ones need to be excised and appropriately covered, preferably with autogenous split thickness skin grafts. This result in increased survival, decreased infection rates, and decreased length of hospital stay. However, this standard of care is quite often not offered to the unfortunate patient in the developing world as also in India. We in the Indian Armed Forces have taken the initiative to mitigate the suffering of the soldier and his dependants by this technique and present our 10-year experience in two large burn centers across the country. 622 consecutive patients with deep burn wounds who underwent early excision were included in the study. Average percentage of burned area was 33.09% and average percentage of area excised early in the study group was 20.07%. Maximum area excised at a time in one patient was 45%, with 15 patients excised in excess of 30%. Hospital stay before the early excision was 2.85 days per percent of body surface area burns. After initiation of early burn wound excision, this decreased to 1 day per percent of body surface area burns.

It is indeed a tough challenge to treat patients with major and deep burn wounds. Early excision of burns is far superior to conservative treatment in tackling deep burns. This markedly reduces mortality and significant morbidity in the wounded soldier and the members of his family