More Than One Third of Intubations in Patients Transferred to Burn Centers are Unnecessary: Proposed Guidelines for Appropriate Intubation of the Burn Patient

Advanced Burn Life Support emphasizes endotracheal intubation for patients with facial burns before transfer to a burn center to prevent airway obstruction. Many patients are intubated before transport and are often extubated shortly after burn center arrival. We hypothesize that many intubations performed before burn center transport are unnecessary. We conducted a retrospective review of all adults who were intubated before burn transfer and survived to discharge from August 2003 to June 2013. Intubations that had 2 or fewer ventilator days (i.e., potentially unnecessary intubations) were compared with those lasting longer than 2 days. Data collected included age, ventilator days, length of stay, % TBSA burn, % second degree, % third degree, % second degree face burn, % third degree face burn, and origin of burns. A total of 416 patient met inclusion criteria. Of these, 129 patients (31.0%) were intubated less than or equal to 1 day, and a total of 171 (40.1%) patients remained intubated for less than or equal to 2 days. Patients who were intubated less than or equal to 2 days differed from those intubated more than 2 days with respect to % TBSA burn (10.2 ± 8.1 vs 30.8 ± 19.7, P
Source: Journal of Burn Care and Research - Category: Rehabilitation Tags: Original Articles Source Type: research