A 13-year-old girl from Arco Idaho is in critical care at the Burn Trauma Center at the University of Utah after a crash when riding a 2003 Yamaha motorcycle. According to police the girl failed to stop at a stop sign and collided with a Jeep Cherokee. Apparently the gas tank ruptured and the motorcycle burst into flames. The girl sustained third degree burns from the fire and was life-flighted to the University Burn Unit.

Burn injuries are devastating injuries. They are devastating physically and emotionally.

The burned skin requires repeated surgical operations to remove the dead tissue and then remaining good skin is surgically harvested and grafted to the burned areas. The harvested areas heal because the surgical removal does not go deep enough to stop it from healing. The deeply burned areas need to be grafted because, although they too will eventually heal without grafting, the healed skin without grafting is of poor quality and often heals with heavy scarring. Grafting will in all likelyhood be required.

Sometimes the grafting is successful and sometimes not. Invasion of infection onto the grafted areas may prevent the areas from healing. Meticulous cleaning and daily dressing changes are required to keep the bacteria at bay while healing continues. During this time the patient will have to lay still in bed or me chemically paralyzed and placed on a ventilator to prevent her from moving and disrupting the grafted skin until it has a chance to begin healing.

The repeated surgical procedures are just the beginning. After the wounds begin to heal physical therapy becomes very important. Physical therapy will start with gentle range of motion and progress to sitting, then standing, then walking and then active range of motion. All of this physical therapy is done while the patient is still trying to complete healing and the pain is often itself debilitating. The goal of the physical therapists is to return the patient to a productive life.

The emotional problems not only belong to the injured patient but oftentimes extend to the family. In this particular instance, being a 13-year-old and being a girl, she will need the expertise offered by social services at the University. The patient and family will be involved in counseling and receive support from other family members that have already dealt with similar situations.

This young girl will have scars for the rest of her life and unfortunately be stigmatized by society and reminded of the injury every day. We need to treat burn victims just like any other member of society and accept them for who they are. This young girl is first and foremost just a young girl - she just happens to be burned.

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/hide comments

Show/hide comment form

Email

Comment

smaller | bigger

Subscribe via email (registered users only)

Write the displayed characters

Add Comment Preview