When do children get burnt?
Burns are a cause of more than 5000 paediatric hospital admissions per year in England and Wales. Injury prevention and service provision may be better planned with knowledge of burn timing. Prospectively collected records from 1st January 2010 to 31st December 2011 were analysed. All episodes involving patients less than 16 years of age reviewed by the South West Children's Burns Centre were included. Data was collected from 1480 records to investigate seasonal, weekly, and daily variation. Day to day analysis showed significantly more burns occurred on Saturday and Sunday than Monday-Friday (p<0.001). Of all burns, 46% occurred within the time-period 08:00-15:59; however the mean hourly rate of burns was highest between 16:00 and 18:59. Of the larger burns (>10% body surface area), 38% occurred after 19:00. There was no statistically significant variation in the monthly (p=0.105) or seasonal (p=0.270) distribution of burns. Bank holidays did not cause a statistically significant increase in numbers. Injury prevention strategies are likely to have most volume impact by increasing awareness of the peak time for burns in children, enabling parents at home with young children to modify any risky behaviour and by targeting older children and their behaviour.
['Verey|Frances|F|', 'Lyttle|Mark D|MD|', 'Lawson|Zoe|Z|', 'Greenwood|Rosemary|R|', 'Young|Amber|A|']
D000061:Accidents, Home D000293:Adolescent D001830:Body Surface Area D002056:Burns D002648:Child D002675:Child, Preschool D015331:Cohort Studies D004739:England D005260:Female D006801:Humans D007223:Infant D008297:Male D012189:Retrospective Studies D013997:Time Factors D014852:Wales
Burn Paediatric Time Child Epidemiology Scald Temporal