*Flashback Friday*
*This post originally appeared on The PediaBlog on December 10, 2020.
Cool Water For Burns
Forget about the ice, the butter, the aloe vera cream, or the toothpaste. When a child suffers a burn, those old-fashioned folk remedies won’t help. Dr. Robert Glatter, an emergency physician, reviews a study that shows us what will:
New research, published online in Annals of Emergency Medicine, reveals that cooling a child’s burn with running water is the best initial treatment.
Researchers found that cool running water can minimize the extent or depth of the burn, speed up healing and reduce the chance that a child may need admission to a burn unit requiring burn excision and skin grafting.
Most of the children involved in the study suffered scalds (hot liquid or steam burns). These types of burns are common, accounting for approximately 75% of burns in youngsters. (20% of pediatric burns are contact burns from touching hot objects.) Most of the burns occurred in the home, involved the arms or legs, and were mild-to-moderate in severity. The study demonstrated that first aid for pediatric burns should consist of running cool water over the burn within the first three hours after the injury. Doing so for 20 minutes or longer reduces short-term damage to the skin, improves healing, and in the long term results in much better clinical outcomes compared to treating burns with alternative strategies:
The study demonstrated that children who received appropriate first aid that consisted of 20 minutes or more of cooling with running water had more than a 40% reduction in the odds of requiring skin grafting. In fact, administering any amount of cool running water was associated with a reduction in the odds of hospital admission by almost 36%, and reduced the odds of requiring an operative procedure (burn excision and skin grafting) by nearly 43 percent.
Among children who did not require skin grafting, the speed of healing was faster with the administration of any cool running water. This is clinically important because more rapid healing reduces the risk of scarring and subsequent pain.
Most burns in children are mild and cover small areas of the body. The American Academy of Pediatrics reminds parents of when it’s time to call the pediatrician:
Any electrical burn or a burn where the skin is charred, leathery, burned away, or has no feeling is severe and should receive medical attention right away. Any blistering, swollen burn that covers an area larger than the size of your child’s hand, or a burn that is on the hand, foot, face, genitals, or over a joint is a serious injury and should be seen immediately by a pediatrician or in an emergency room. If you are worried about a burn, even if it doesn’t look like any of the above types of burns, a pediatrician should see it.
Read “First Aid for Burns: Parent FAQs” from the AAP here.
source http://www.thepediablog.com/2021/12/10/flashback-friday-184/
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