Burns – types and treatment

1. Big picture

Burns are surgical trauma wounds caused by thermal, chemical, electrical, radiation, or inhalational injury. The examiner usually wants you to answer three things clearly:

1. How deep is the burn? → determines healing and grafting need.
2. How much total body surface area is burned? → determines shock risk and fluid resuscitation.
3. Is there an immediate life threat? → airway injury, inhalation injury, shock, circumferential eschar, electrical injury, associated trauma.

Burns are not only skin injuries. Major burns cause a systemic inflammatory response with **capillary leak, edema, hypovolemia, hypothermia, infection risk, hypermetabolism, renal injury,