Burn is a dangerous condition and a pathetic looking disease.The victim always feels shrunk.A lot of complications follow a moderate to severe burn.In hospitalized patient nosocomial infection plays a major deteriorating factor .Isolation and careful choosing of antibiotics and a good dressing will help to a great extent if not full to control infection.Pain has to be addressed.Good nutrition with protein supplementation is important for recovery.The main long term effects are scar formation,disfigurement,scar retraction and deformity,keloid formation,recurrent infection of keloid and a cancer called marjolin's ulcer.To minimize the scar formation skin grafting and if not available, in a major burn synthetic skin substitutes will play a good role.Now-a-days cultured skin cells are being developed but not available everywhere for use.Still, to minimize scar formation different stockings( compression bandages) are in use.
Once scar is formed it comes with it's inherent problems of retraction causing disfigurements of different types as imaginable to imagine depending on the site.Scars may hypertrophy and lead to ugly keloid formation.Keloids are unorganized growth of scar tissue and encroach on to the healthy surrounding tissue.Again that is difficult to treat.The treatment range from application of silicon gel to local injection of steroids.but nothing is satisfactory.
Contractures due to scar tissue may limit the movement if located near a joint and has to be released and skin grafted.
The most dreaded long term complication is a cancer on the scar tissue called Marjolin's ulcer and fortunately it is a little bit easier to treat.
So some precautions at some dangerous places may prevent these cascading effect of burn.
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