No abstract

Introduction Aggressive fluid resuscitation with crystalloid has been a mainstay of therapy in burn injuries for over 50 years. However, in trauma populations there has been a shift away from crystalloid based resuscitation and the early administration of blood products has been recommended. The primary objective of this study was to evaluate if large-volume crystalloid resuscitation of patients presenting with both burn and trauma injuries is associated with higher mortality and complications. Methods This was a matched case-controlled retrospective chart review of patients treated over a 5-year period that suffered mixed burn and trauma injuries (MI). Patients that suffered burn only injuries (BO) were used as the control and were matched on TBSA, age, and gender. All patients were resuscitated using the standard burn center resuscitation protocol. Results A total of 4,416 patients were admitted to the burn center during the study period. Of those 18 had concomitant burn and trauma injuries requiring burn fluid resuscitation and were successfully matched to BO patients. There was no difference in age, gender, ethnicity, % TBSA burned, presence of inhalation injury, or Injury Severity Score (ISS). BO patients were more likely to have flame/flash as the etiology of burn injury (p=.0257). With fluid resuscitation, there was no difference in the total volume of fluid administered, or the amount of crystalloid or colloid administered. MI patients were more likely to have received blood products than BO patients (472 ml vs 19 ml, p=.0387). There was no difference in the following outcome measures: mortality, ICU days, ventilator days, number of surgeries, infections, or major complications. The only significant outcome difference was that the BO patients had a greater hospital length of stay (44 days) than the MI patients (24 days, p < 0.001). Conclusions Aggressive fluid resuscitation using existing burn resuscitation protocols did not result in greater complications in burn-trauma patients than in burn only patients. Crystalloid-based burn resuscitation is safe in patients with combined burn and trauma injuries.