The uniqueness of burn injuries and
their requisite treatment regimen has
created the need for burn specialization units that start patients down the road
to recovery quickly and continue the treatment over what is often a lengthy recovery
period.
Each year, more than 500,000 people in
the U.S. are treated for burn trauma,
according to the Web site of the American
Burn Association (ABA). Work-related
accidents, car crashes and home fires are
frequent causes of burns that can result in
cosmetic damage, loss of physical function
and emotional scarring. More than 60 percent of burn patients are treated in one of
the country’s 125 specialized burn treatment centers, according to the ABA.
“Burns are an equal-opportunity offender,” says Dr. Peter Grossman, co-director of
the Grossman Burn Center at Western Medical Center Santa Ana. “In a split second,
people’s lives are changed. Our goal at the
burn center is to return patients to their pre-injury status as quickly as possible and to
make certain that the treatment isn’t as bad
as or worse than the initial injury itself.”
Smart Business spoke with Grossman
about the unique nature of burns, and how
Orange County executives benefit from the
presence of a specialized burn center.
Why are burns a unique trauma?
First of all, they are a progressive injury.
After the initial trauma occurs, the tissue
damage can actually worsen over the next
few days, so it’s important to take some initial treatment steps and then continue to
evaluate the degree of the injury before
deciding on a complete course of treatment. Also, the body typically wants to
overheal a burn. This overhealing process
creates excess scar tissue, so it’s important
to begin treatment with a cosmetic outcome in mind and to control how much
scar tissue is created in the process.
Second, whether we like it or not, appearance is important in our society and the
physical scarring that can accompany a
burn can be socially ostracizing for a
patient. Burn victims often develop post-traumatic stress disorder and they need support in coping with the fact that they
may have experienced a life-changing
event.
Third, burn treatment may take years or
even decades in order to completely
restore function and to reconstruct the
affected areas. It is helpful if the patient
can stay with the same physician over the
course of the entire treatment period.
What is unique about the specialized care in
a burn center?
Burns often are treated by general surgeons who are focused on healing the
wounds and restoring function. Subsequently, they release the patient to a plastic surgeon for cosmetic restoration. When
plastic surgeons see a patient who has been
through the functional restoration process
independently, our hands often are tied
because the damage caused by not incorporating cosmetic restoration with functional restoration has already been done.
When general surgeons remove skin to
complete a graft, they often remove the
healthy tissue at a deeper level than a plastic surgeon will. This can cause more pain
and scarring at the removal site than is necessary and we don’t want to create a
wound to heal a wound.
We bring in a psychologist from the onset and we engage multiple specialists as needed, using a team-based approach to the
treatment. Our philosophy is to treat the
whole patient. We believe that we achieve
both better and faster results when the
medical professionals approach patient
treatment on a cohesive basis.
One of the greatest advances in burn care
is not as much technological as it is philosophical. We now know that early removal
of the burned skin and covering it with a
graft or replacement tissue decreases bacteria and restores healthy blood flow to the
area, which increases the positive outcomes. To achieve this, we use an operating room.
Is burn treatment a surgical procedure?
In burn centers, we take a very aggressive
approach to treatment. It is more comfortable for the patient to have the burned skin
removed under general anesthesia. Because we are a specialized burn center, we
don’t have to compete for operating room
time and we also find that using a surgical
approach actually shortens hospital stays
and assists with cost management.
How does having a burn center benefit local
businesses and the community?
Because so many burns result from
work-related injuries, business professionals can achieve peace of mind knowing
that their injured employees will receive
state-of-the-art care. Having a specialized
local burn center reduces medical costs for
employers and it is often a consideration
for prospective employees when they think
about relocation to the county. Burn centers used to have a reputation as dark and
dreary places, now we help patients return
as close as possible to their complete pre-injury status as quickly as we can.
DR. PETER GROSSMAN is co-director of the Grossman Burn
Center at Western Medical Center Santa Ana. He is certified by the
American Board of Plastic Surgery. Reach him at (714) 956-2876.
For more information, visit www.westernmedicalcenter.com/
HospitalServices/GrossmanBurnCenter.
