Article Text

Download PDFPDF
Severe burns in a resource-limited rural healthcare centre
  1. Sanglap Masih1,
  2. Royson Dsouza2 and
  3. Adam Lee Goldstein3
  1. 1St John's Medical College Hospital, Bangalore, Karnataka, India
  2. 2General Surgery, ASHWINI, Gudalur, India
  3. 3Edith Wolfson Medical Center, Holon, Israel
  1. Correspondence to Dr Royson Dsouza; roy6dsouza{at}gmail.com

Abstract

A woman in her mid-30s presented to our 30-bed healthcare centre with extensive burns, hours after falling into a shallow pit of burning dried tea leaves. On arrival, there was no evidence of airway compromise. She was fully conscious but had signs of shock and hypovolemia. Forty-five per cent of the total body surface area was burned, including the face, neck, thorax, abdomen, upper limbs and thighs. The family refused referral to a burns centre and insisted on continuing treatment at our facility. Our hospital, not equipped to manage burns, was adapted to deliver effective, immediate care. After initial stabilisation, the patient was unwilling to remain hospitalised because of her husband’s employment commitment. Subsequently, we were notified that the patient died within 1 month of discharge. This article highlights the importance of burns care facilities in rural India and the impact of a failure to access quality health on outcomes.

  • primary care
  • physiotherapy (rehabilitation)
  • resuscitation
  • global health
  • trauma

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request Permissions

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

Footnotes

  • Contributors SM, RD and ALG were responsible for drafting of the text, sourcing and editing of clinical images, investigation of results, drawing original diagrams and algorithms and critical revision for important intellectual content. RD and ALG gave final approval of the manuscript.

  • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

  • Case reports provide a valuable learning resource for the scientific community and can indicate areas of interest for future research. They should not be used in isolation to guide treatment choices or public health policy.

  • Map disclaimer The depiction of boundaries on this map does not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of BMJ (or any member of its group) concerning the legal status of any country, territory, jurisdiction or area or of its authorities. This map is provided without any warranty of any kind, either express or implied.

  • Competing interests None declared.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.