Elsevier

Burns

Volume 38, Issue 4, June 2012, Pages 578-584
Burns

30 years of burn disasters within the UK: Guidance for UK emergency preparedness

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.burns.2011.10.007Get rights and content

Abstract

Aim

To review casualty profiles of major UK burn disasters over the last 30 years in order to provide guidance to aid burn and emergency service planning and provision so as to improve emergency preparedness for future national disasters.

Methods

A review of published literature was undertaken for disasters within the UK that had occurred between 1980 and 2009. Those producing 10 or more casualties with at least one sustaining cutaneous burns injuries were included. Frequency and extent of burns were recorded and analysed.

Results

In total 37 disasters were included in this study, their frequency of occurrence falling over the 30 years reviewed. Burns tended to make up a small proportion of all casualties and were often relatively small in size with only 3 disasters having more than 5 patients with >10% burns.

Discussion

This paper can help guide appropriate staffing and bed capacity planning for regional burns units and provide realistic figures to guide scenarios for national emergency training exercises. Due to the infrequent nature of major disasters, Critical Care, Trauma Care and Burn Care Networks will all need to be closely integrated and their implementation rehearsed so as to ensure optimal response to a major national disaster.

Introduction

Following every major disaster there is a subsequent public and medical community outcry for better preparedness for future incidents. The National Burn Care Review Report published in 2001 recommended that all burn services have a major incident plan to put into action in the event of a disaster involving many burn casualties. This was followed up with the National Burn Care Group's “National Major Incident Plan for Burn Injury” in 2006 [1]. Within this report 25 major disasters involving large numbers of burn victims, which occurred throughout Europe, are listed with total number of fatalities and injuries however no detailed breakdown of the extent and nature of the burns sustained is documented.

Knowledge of past casualty profiles is essential in planning for future events. Although a plan for disasters of catastrophic proportions is important so as to be able to cope should such an event ever occur, requirements for activity on this scale is thankfully rarely necessary. Instead most disasters, as will be discussed, produce large numbers of injuries but relatively few major burn victims (burns >10%). By reviewing 30 years of burn incidents an estimate as to the number and severity of burns can be made for planning purposes at a local, regional and national level.

Section snippets

Methods

A review of pertinent literature published by the government, medical journals and popular websites was undertaken to ascertain burn casualty profiles for major disasters, data sources are outlined in Table 1. Disasters included were those which had occurred within the UK between the years 1980 and 2009, resulted in 10 or more casualties (including injured and on scene fatalities), and in which at least 1 casualty had sustained cutaneous burns. Where possible the severity of burn was recorded

Results

170 disasters with 10 or more casualties were found to have occurred during the study period of 1980–2009. Only 37 of these disasters resulted in any cutaneous burns, a rate of 1.23 disasters per year. These are listed in Table 2. Detailed documentation of disasters is scarce throughout all forms of literature and those that mention casualties often contain little or no information on the extent, type or severity of their injuries.

As expected the majority of the disasters in which cutaneous

Discussion

In this study of 30 years of UK history, a total of 37 disasters resulting in burn casualties were discovered (shown in Table 2). Documentation on type and extent of injuries in published medical literature or public newspapers is generally poor. 23 resulted in less than 10 fatalities; only five resulted in more than 50 fatalities of which only 2 had more than 100 fatalities. Almost all fatalities, when they occurred, occurred on scene at the time of the disaster. Additional deaths were usually

Conflict of interest statement

No author involved in the writing of this paper titled “30 years of burn disasters within the UK: Guidance for UK emergency preparedness” have any financial or personal relationships with other people or organisations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work.

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