Burn Injuries

Burn injuries and scars are treated in plastic surgery clinics. Burn impairs both appearance and function of organs. For instance, in hand burn injuries, besides appearance, the abilities of hand to open, close and grasp may also be impaired, or a burn scar on gill or neck may pull submaxilla downwards, thereby preventing the patient to close his mouth. Thus, burn injury treatment has both reconstructive (repair) and aesthetic purposes in plastic surgery. Treatments at early stage and late stage are different:

At early stage:

Refers to the first aid intervention performed immediately upon burning, and subsequent dressings. It is intended to cure the burn injury with the least possible skin loss, and wound should be dressed appropriately by a doctor, and wound should be kept clean and hygienic. In the case of burning, the first things to do are washing the burned zone by cold water, and keeping it cold, and stripping the patient named, and examining the burned zones, and cleaning the burned tissues. Then, appropriate dressings are applied. Wound should not be allowed to go into sepsis. Dressing is very important at this stage as well. There are many different pomades and drugs used for burn dressing. If appropriate pomade is not used in dressing, the patient loses time, and his burn injury may worsen, rather than healing. There are many pomades such as Madecasol, Silverdin, Kenakort and Furacin, but each is indicated in a different area. In general, we start dressing with one of them, and continue with another one sometime after. Therefore, in case of a burn injury, patient must absolutely go to a specialized doctor and must not try dress the wound himself.

At late stage:

In the case of skin loss due to burn (third degree burns), the area should be repaired in accordance with plastic surgery principles. Skin defects are repaired either by using skin in areas neighboring the wound or by using skin patches taken from leg, buttocks or inguen, and they are termed as “graft” in medicine.