Electric Burn Injuries in Bangladesh: An Epidemiological Overview from A Tertiary Level Hospital

Electrical burn injuries comprise a small fraction of the total burn admissions, but they are potentially a mutilating type. Electrical burns are one of the most important public health issues in industrial societies and can lead to serious outcomes and socioeconomic problems. This study was conducted to observe different epidemiological factors of electric burn patients attending at burn and plastic surgery department in Chittagong Medical College Hospital, Chattogram, Bangladesh. This retrospective study enrolled consecutive electrical burn patients admitted in Chittagong Medical College Hospital between 2020 to 2023. Demographics, clinical data and outcomes were recorded. Pearson’s chi-squared test was used to examine differences between groups exposed to different voltages and Spearman’s rank-order correlations were done to examine relationships between groups. We assessed 639 electric burn patients. There were 213 high voltage electric burn (HVEB) injuries and 426 low voltage electric burn (LVEB) injuries. Mean age of the patients was 27.81 ± 12.02 years (Mean ± SD) with a range of 1-55 years. Among them 84.8% patients were male, and 15.2% patients were female. The mean TBSA of burn in HVEB patients was 10.38 ± 4.91% (Mean ± SD) with a range of 5-30% whereas the mean TBSA of burn in LVEB patients was 4.5 ± 1.4% (Mean ± SD) with a range of 2-8% which is statistically significant. 351 patients (82.4%) in HVEB needed surgery and 75 patients (17.6%) were managed by conservative treatment, whereas 30 patients (14.1%) in LVEB needed surgery and 183 patients (85.9%) were managed by conservative treatment. There were positive and highly significant correlations between voltage of burns and duration of hospital stay and between voltage of burns and treatment needed. All patients in the LVEB group (213 patients, 100%) were discharged. In HVEB group 375 patients (88%) were discharged, 31 patients (7.3%) were referred to higher centers and 20 patients (4.7%) were death.