• Janine M Duke, Suzanne Rea, James H Boyd, Sean M Randall, and Fiona M Wood.
• Burn Injury Research Unit, School of Surgery, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia; janine.duke@uwa.edu.au.
• Pediatrics. 2015 Apr 1; 135 (4): e903-10.

ObjectiveTo assess the impact of burn injury sustained during childhood on long-term mortality and to quantify any increased risk of death attributable to burn injury.MethodsA population-based cohort study of children younger than 15 years hospitalized for burn injury in Western Australia (1980-2012) and a matched noninjured comparison group. Deidentified extraction of linked hospital morbidity and death records for the period 1980-2012 were provided by the Western Australian Data Linkage System. An inception cohort (1980-2012) of burn cases younger than 15 years of age when hospitalized for a first burn injury (n = 10,426) and a frequency matched noninjured comparison cohort (n = 40,818) were identified. Survival analysis was conducted by using the Kaplan-Meier method and Cox proportional hazards regression. Mortality rate ratios and attributable risk percent adjusted for sociodemographic and preexisting heath factors were generated.ResultsThe median follow-up time for the pediatric burn cohort was 18.1 years after discharge. The adjusted all-cause mortality rate ratios for burn injury was 1.6 (95% confidence interval: 1.3-2.0); children with burn injury had a 1.6 times greater rate of mortality than those with no injury. The index burn injury was estimated to account for 38% (attributable risk percent) of all recorded deaths in the burn injury cohort during the study period.ConclusionsBurn injury sustained by children is associated with an increased risk of long-term all-cause mortality. Estimates of the total mortality burden based on in-hospital deaths alone underestimates the true burden from burn injury.Copyright © 2015 by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

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