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| ORIGINAL ARTICLE |
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| Year : 2020 | Volume
: 28
| Issue : 1 | Page : 84-88 |
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Sociodemographic profile of burn patients at a tertiary care hospital of Bundelkhand region of India
Saurabh Kumar Tiwari1, Manish Jain1, Satyendra Kumar1, Amit Mohan Varshney2, Sudhir Kumar1
1 Department of Surgery, Maharani Laxmi Bai Medical College, Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh, India
2 Department of Community Medicine, Maharani Laxmi Bai Medical College, Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh, India
| Date of Submission | 15-Jul-2020 |
| Date of Acceptance | 19-Oct-2020 |
| Date of Web Publication | 21-May-2021 |
Correspondence Address:
Dr. Satyendra Kumar
PR-13, MLB Medical College Campus, Jhansi - 284 128, Uttar Pradesh
India
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/ijb.ijb_18_20
Background: Burns are a serious global public health concern. In India, every year, a substantial proportion of mortality and morbidity occurs due to burn injuries (1.4 lakh and 2.4 lakh, respectively). Burn injuries lead a significant medical, social, and psychological problem along with severe economic loss to individual and nation. A sociodemographic profile of burn patients is essential for the planning of program for the prevention of burns. The present study was conducted to study the sociodemographic profile of burn patients of Bundelkhand.
Materials and Methods: Two hundred and fifty burn patients admitted consecutively between March 2018 and September 2018 in the burns unit of Maharani Laxmi Bai Medical College and Hospital, Jhansi, India, (Uttar Pradesh) were included in the present study. Sociodemographic data were obtained by the questionnaire as well as through the interview of patients and attendants.
Results: The most affected age group, gender, and religion were 21–30 years (37.60%), female, (51.2%) and Hindus (92%), respectively. The common place of burn was home (88.4%) and maximum patients (75.2%) belonged to the rural areas. The floor cooking was most preferred method used for cooking (83.2%), and majority of patients were wearing synthetic clothes at the time of injury (51.2%). Psychiatric illness and suicidal tendency were present in only 6.8% of the patients. Regarding socioeconomic status, most of the patients (70.8%) belonged to the upper lower class. Thermal burns, electrical burns, and other (filigree and chemical) burns were more common in the married population, whereas scald was more common in unmarried population.
Conclusion: All types of major burns were commonly occurred in the rural population, and they had poor educational and socioeconomic status. The incidence of burn injuries was mainly accidental in nature. Floor cooking is prevalent in Bundelkhand.
Keywords: Bundelkhand, burn injuries, sociodemographic profile, tertiary care hospital
How to cite this article:
Tiwari SK, Jain M, Kumar S, Varshney AM, Kumar S. Sociodemographic profile of burn patients at a tertiary care hospital of Bundelkhand region of India. Indian J Burns 2020;28:84-8 |
How to cite this URL:
Tiwari SK, Jain M, Kumar S, Varshney AM, Kumar S. Sociodemographic profile of burn patients at a tertiary care hospital of Bundelkhand region of India. Indian J Burns [serial online] 2020 [cited 2023 Jun 9];28:84-8. Available from: https://www.ijburns.com/text.asp?2020/28/1/84/316570 |
| Introduction | |  |
In India, around 7 million people suffer from burn injuries each year with 1.4 lakh deaths and 2.4 lakh people suffer with disability.[1] People living in the low- and middle-income countries are at higher risk for burns than people living in high-income countries and within all countries; however, burn risk correlates with socioeconomic status.[2] Bundelkhand region is one of the drought hit and under developed region lying in Southern Uttar Pradesh (UP) and northern part of Madhya Pradesh states of India. Poor socioeconomic condition and dried climate leads to increased incidence of burn cases in the region. A sociodemographic profile of burn patients of this region is essential to prevent the incidence of burn and so the present study was conducted.
| Materials and Methods | | |
The present study was conducted at a tertiary care hospital attached with Maharani Laxmi Bai Medical College, Jhansi (UP), India. An approval from the Institutional Ethics Committee was obtained before the commencement of the study. A total 250 burn cases were analyzed admitted in the burns unit of Maharani Laxmi Bai Medical College and hospital over a period of 18 months (March 2018–September 2019). A questionnaire was developed and it was modified as per the requirement after pilot study. Registration number, age, sex, religion, residence, marital status, level of education, occupation, income, socioeconomic status (registration data), place of burn, method of cooking, type of clothes at time of burn, type of family, any addiction, any psychiatric illness, and suicidal tendencies were recorded.
The data were obtained by questionnaire as well as through interview with the patient themselves or relatives or attendants. All patients, regardless of age and gender, presented with burn injury and who had given consent to participate in the study were included in the study. The patients with minor burn injuries were treated on outpatient department basis, and patients not giving consent were excluded. The data of the present study were analyzed by using the SPSS software version 15.0 (SPSS 19.0, IBM, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India). The different frequencies and association among the variables were statistically tested using the Chi-square test. The study design was prospective in nature.
| Results | | |
A total of 250 burn cases were analyzed admitted in the burns unit of Maharani Laxmi Bai Medical College and Hospital, Jhansi, during the study period. The most affected age group, gender and religion were 21–30 years (37.60%), female (51.2%), and Hindus (92%), respectively [Table 1]. | Table 1: Distribution of patients according to age, gender, religion, and children they have (n=250)
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The common place of burn was home (88.4%) and maximum patients (75.2%) belonged to the rural areas. The floor cooking was most preferred method of cooking (83.2%) and majority of patients were worn synthetic clothes [Table 2]. | Table 2: Distribution of patients according to place of burn, residence, method of cooking, and type of clothes (n=250)
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Most of the burn patients belonged to joint family (61.2%). About 60% of the patients were not having any kind of addiction. Psychiatric illness and suicidal tendency were present in only 6.8% of the patients. About 29% of the patients were illiterate, 26% were educated up to middle school only, whereas only 4% were educated up to posthigh school diploma [Table 3]. | Table 3: Distribution of patients according to type of family, having addiction, having psychiatric illness, having suicidal tendency, and literacy (n=250)
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Most of the patients were unemployed (48.8%) [Table 4]. Regarding socioeconomic status, most of the patients (70.8%) belonged to the upper lower class (IV), whereas minimum number of patients (0.4%) belonged to the upper middle and higher class [Table 5]. | Table 5: Distribution of patients according to socioeconomic status (n=250) (modified BG Prasad Socioeconomic Classification 2018)
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In the rural areas, thermal burn and scald were common, whereas electrical burns were the most common in the urban areas. The association between residency and nature of burn was significant (P value smaller than 0.05) [Table 6].
Thermal burns, electrical burns, and other (filigree and chemical) burns were more common in married population, whereas scald was more common in unmarried population (because scald were more common in the age group between 0 and 10 years). The association between marital status and nature of burn was statistically significant (P < 0.05) [Table 7].
All types of major burns commonly occurred in the rural population. The association between place of burn and nature of burn was statistically significant (P < 0.05) [Table 8].
Most of the patients affected from thermal burns and electrical burns wore synthetic clothes at the time of burn, whereas patients affected with scald and other type of burns (filigree and chemical burns) had wore most commonly mixed type of clothes. The association between type of clothes and nature of burns was statistically significant (P < 0.05) [Table 9].
All the type of burns was most commonly seen in the upper lower class. Correlation between socioeconomic status and nature of burn was statistically significant (P < 0.05) [Table 10]. | Table 10: Association between socioeconomic status and nature of burn (n=250)
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| Discussion | | |
Females were more prone to burns then males. This is because females are mainly engaged in domestic chores. This was similar with the findings of Shanmugakrishnan et al.[3] from South India. Hinduism is the dominant religion in this region and so most of cases were Hindu (92%).
Most of the burn cases were in the age group of 21–40 (59.2%) in our study. This is the most productive and active age. Similar findings were observed by others.[4],[5],[6]
In the present study, nearly 71% of the victims belonged to the upper lower class. It was similar to the findings of Dutta et al.[7] from West Bengal.
The common place of burn was home (88.4%) and maximum patients (75.2%) belonged to the rural areas. These findings were consistent with those reported by others.[7],[8],[9] The floor cooking was the most preferred method of cooking (83.2%), and majority of patients wore synthetic clothes. These indicated their poor socioeconomic status and use of unsafe method of cooking.
Most of the burn patients belonged to joint family (61.2%). Psychiatric illness and suicidal tendency were present in only 6.8% of the patients. These indicate that the incidence of burn injuries was accidental in nature. Similar observations reported by Chakraborty et al.[10] from West Bengal and Jaiswal et al.[11] from Madhya Pradesh. In the present study, most of patients (55%) were either illiterate or educated up to the middle school only and so most of the patients were unemployed (48.8%). Such types of patients are prone to burn injuries due to the low level of awareness. The major factors related with burn injuries are low socioeconomic status, poor living conditions, illiteracy, overcrowding, and floor level cooking are the risk factors frequently related with burns.[12],[13]
In the rural areas, thermal burn and scald were common, whereas electrical burns were the most common in the urban areas. The association between residency and nature of burn was statistically significant (P < 0.05), and so they were associated with each other.
Thermal burns, electrical burns, and other (filigree and chemical) burns were more common in the married population, whereas scald was more common in the unmarried population (because scald were more common in the age group between 0 and 10 years). The association between marital status and nature of burn was statistically significant (P < 0.05) and so they were associated with each other.
All type of major burns was commonly occurred in the rural population. Correlation between place of burn and nature of burn was statistically significant (P < 0.05) and so they wererelated with each other.
Most of the patients affected from thermal burn and electrical burns had worn synthetic clothes at the time of burn. Haralkar et al.[5] reported contrary to our findings (maximum number of patients had mixed type of clothes). The patients affected with scald and other type of burns (filigree and chemical burns) had worn most commonly mixed type of clothes. The association between type of clothes and nature of burn was significant (P < 0.05) and so they were associated with each other.
All the type of burns most commonly affected in the upper lower class. Correlation between socioeconomic status and nature of burn was statistically significant (P value smaller than 0.05) and so they were related with each other. People with poor socioeconomic status were prone to burns.
Limitations
Our study also has some limitations. This study was based on the history of events as narrated by patients or care takers so complete evaluation of facts may not be possible. Proper history of events from patients with severely poor general condition at time of admission cannot be elicited, so had to rely on care takers for events, although for better accuracy important data were collected thrice (at the time of admission, during treatment, and at the time of discharge).
| Conclusion | | |
Our study focused on the sociodemographic profile of burn patients. To reduce the incidence of burns, the literacy rate, socioeconomic status, and general awareness of common people need to be raised. Female population should be educated regarding cooking methods and safety instructions. The safe and efficient stoves should be distributed in the region at subsidized rate.
Financial support and sponsorship
Nil.
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest.
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[Table 1], [Table 2], [Table 3], [Table 4], [Table 5], [Table 6], [Table 7], [Table 8], [Table 9], [Table 10]
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