The Marco Houpe Foundation
The Marco Houpe Foundation
The Emotional and Financial Costs of Skin Graft Surgery
When an individual suffers a serious burn, the injury kills the affected layers of skin. This can not only leave a person profoundly disfigured, but is also medically dangerous since it leaves the burn victim open to infections.
As a result, after a significant burn injury, skin graft surgery may be necessary. Skin grafting involves taking healthy skin from one part of the body and attaching (grafting) it to an area where the skin has been damaged either because of a burn or on account of some other injury. The deeper the wound, the more tissue must be extracted from the undamaged area of the body with healthy skin.
Skin graft surgery can be quite painful, and it will usually involve anesthesia and a hospital stay of a few days. Moreover, even after a skin graft, the area around a burn will not look the same as would uninjured skin. In fact, after a skin graft, a person will have two wounds, the original area of the burn and the area from which the doctor extracted skin.
Like any medical procedure these days, a skin graft costs a lot of money. On average, a skin graft will cost in excess of $15,000; however, the procedure can cost as much as $25,000 - $30,000. That’s roughly an average of $45,000 (without hospital cost). While of course, one would hope that a victim has quality and adequate health insurance that would cover these expenses, it’s a hard fact that many people may find that they will have to bare a large part of these expenses out of pocket.
What Makes Facial Burns Dangerous?
An intense facial burn may leave a permanent disfigurement and other health problems that can last the rest of your life. Not all facial burns are this severe, though. You may only suffer a mild burn that heals up in short order. Still, even a mild facial burn may leave behind a health problem that could become fatal if you are not aware of it.
You may not feel any burns inside your mouth or throat following a sudden encounter with fire. The burn may not have gotten past your lips or mouth, or so you think. The Sepsis Society explains that facial burns may penetrate deeper into your air passages without your knowledge.
Air Passage Damage From Fire
A burn to your face can damage your air passages. This can happen due to fire spewed from chemicals, a machine or a hot stove. Even steam released from a pot can potentially burn the interior of your throat.
Even if you escape a burn to the face, a close encounter with fire may also expose you to hot air or smoke. Inhaling heated air or smoke suddenly may leave damage to your windpipe or nasal passages. This damage could manifest as breathing problems or other health issues later.
Signs of Air Passage Problems
Following a facial burn, you might notice that your voice sounds different. You could experience issues with your breathing. You may develop a wheeze or a cough. You might even find it hard to breathe normally.
These signs may indicate a major problem with your air passages. A medical examination may reveal the extent of any damage created by a recent burn and guide you to proper treatment. If your burn was the result of negligence caused by another party, you may have to factor trial, court cost, time, and travel among other things into your medical treatment cost.
An Introduction to Electrical Burns
Suffering a severe electrical shock can be traumatic on a number of levels. For one, the shock will cause a person’s muscles to contract sharply and these contractions can result in broken bones or other injuries. Additionally, severe shocks can cause seizures, low blood pressure and, in the worst case scenario, a malfunction or even complete breakdown of one’s heart.
Burn injuries are also another common symptom of electric shock. These injuries will frequently appear in the part of the body where the electric current entered or left a person. Like other burns, they can range from first-degree to third-degree.
A first-degree burn is a relatively minor occurrence that many people may suffer several times in their lives. By contrast, a third-degree burn can permanently destroy a piece of tissue and require skin grafting or other painful treatments. In some cases, a third-degree burn may end with amputation.
Electrical burn injuries can happen in a number of different environments. Sometimes, a product is defective or, even if it works properly, is marketed with insufficient warnings to consumers, or parents, about the possibility of getting burned.
Other electrical burn injuries are work-related. Many people in Louisiana have to work in environments where they are frequently working around or with electric currents. Faulty equipment, inadequate training and sometimes just flat out carelessness can cause work-related injuries due to electrical burns.
Those who suffer a burn injury due to electrical shock may well have a long road of recovery ahead of them. In addition to the medical bills, someone who suffers a bad burn may be laid up for weeks or even months while they recover. Moreover, the emotional toll on a burn injury victim is profound.
Everyday Products Can Cause Chemical Burn
Everyday household materials and cleaners, like bleach, drain de-clogging chemicals and other supplies, one can find on the shelves of a big box store and/or a hardware store can cause serious burns.
Likewise, even products used for one’s body, like certain skin treatments or commercial beauty products, can in some cases cause chemical burns. For those who like to do home improvement projects or work on cars, some of the chemicals they may encounter could likewise cause burning.
While many chemical burns are, thankfully, easy to treat, they do tend to affect vulnerable parts of the body, including the face and the eyes. The burning of one’s interior organs is also possible if the toxic chemical gets inhaled or swallowed.
In the most severe cases, symptoms can include serious breathing problems, heart problems, and dangerously low blood pressure. A bad chemical burn can cause one’s heart to stop, which is of course, a life-threatening condition.
Frequently, chemical burns are not the fault of the victim. In some cases, the product itself, or its packaging, could be defective. In other cases, perhaps, the warning labels were inadequate, unclear or non-existent.
Please remember to read all instructions carefully and keep any and all chemical-based products out of the reach of children.
Procedures Used to Treat Burns
Severe burn injuries can have serious consequences for the victims and create difficulties for them.
In order to treat the burns, people may need to go to the hospital and undergo various treatments. These can include water-based treatments, ointments and creams, pain medication, drugs to prevent infections and other treatments. Though, severe burns may require much more medical treatment, such as surgeries and other procedures.
Some people will need breathing assistance if a person is burned around the neck and it swells. People may also need feeding tubes. Deep burns may require skin grafts when the skin is completely burned away. In some situations, people will also need plastic surgery for scarring and to increase flexibility around the burns.
These procedures are expensive though, and people can be in the hospital for lengthy periods of time. Burns often require rehabilitation after being released.
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Risk Factors Associated With Burn Injuries
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Risk Factors Associated With Burn Injuries
burn injuries | burn survivors | coping | psychotherapy bulletin | PTSD | risk factors | social support | trauma | trauma-related
Author’s Note: Melissa M. Matos, MA is a graduate student at the California School of Professional Psychology at Alliant International University, Los Angeles.
The skin has been described as the largest organ of the integumentary system (Levenson, 2008). One condition affecting the skin organ is burn injuries. Serious or severe burn injuries have been described as a life-threatening state that challenges all of the integrating systems in the body (Sveen, Dyster-Aas, & Willebrand, 2009). Serious burn injuries are not rare and often occur from everyday circumstances that come unanticipated and without warning (Taal & Faber, 1998).
According to Karter (2011), someone was injured in a fire every 30 minutes and a fire death occurred every 169 minutes in the United States in 2010. In addition, burn injuries appear to be more common among young children between the ages of 2 to 4 years, young adult males between the ages of 17 to 25 years, and older adults over the age of 65 (Flynn, 2010; Yu & Dimsdale, 1999).
The impact of burn injuries extends beyond that of visible difference and appears to be accompanied by a wide host of consequences. Financial burdens experienced by patients with burn injuries may occur from job loss associated with frequent absences due to medical treatment, and costs associated with medical surgery, rehabilitation care, and disability payments (Sadeghi-Bazargani et al., 2011; Yu & Dimsdale, 1999).
Physical impairment is often reported resulting from burn pain which is intense and causes great discomfort and suffering, particularly during hospitalization and the dressing of wounds (Yu & Dimsdale, 1999).
However, it is the psychological reaction to burn injuries, which perhaps may cause the greatest of impairment and distress. Patients suffering from burn injuries may experience depression, anxiety, and delirium associated with the physical experience of burn pain, as well as social withdrawal and negative body image due to visible differences (De Sousa, 2010; Sadeghi-Bazargani, Maghsoudi, Soudmand-Niri, Ranjbar, & Mashadi-Abdollahi, 2011; Yu & Dimsdale, 1999).
In addition, patients with burn injuries appear to be at greater risk for developing symptoms associated with psychological trauma and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) such as re-experiencing of the incident via intrusive recollections, avoidance of reminders of the event, recurrent nightmares, memory and sleep disturbances, and phobic behavior (Lawrence & Fauerbach, 2003; Yu & Dimsdale, 1999).
Statement of the Problem
Statement of the Problem
While the impact of psychological trauma and PTSD may have devastating effects on daily functioning and psychological well-being, early detection is associated with a positive prognosis (De Sousa, 2010; Yu & Dimsdale, 1999).
However, patients with burn injuries are less likely to interact with healthcare professionals that are trained in psychological assessment, but rather are typically treated by medical staff who may lack experience in screening for psychological issues in their patients (De Sousa, 2010).
Medical practitioners such as plastic surgeons and rehabilitation specialists need to be made aware that improvement of patients’ quality of life is not measured only by physical functioning, but by social and psychological factors as well; standards of care of patients with burns should include psychosocial rehabilitation as well as physical rehabilitation (De Sousa, 2010).
Therefore, burn injury rehabilitation and plastic surgery medical teams need to be made aware of the PTSD risk factors associated with patients with burn injuries in order to screen and determine not only if psychiatric referrals are necessary, but also how to provide appropriate feedback concerning treatment outcomes (De Sousa, 2010).
PTSD and Burn Injuries
PTSD and Burn Injuries
Prevalence and Onset
PTSD is a psychiatric condition occurring following exposure to a traumatic event which is characterized by persistent and intrusive re-experiencing of the event, avoidance of stimuli associated with the traumatic event, emotional numbing, dissociation, and hyperarousal (American Psychiatric Association [DSM-IV], 2000*; Lawrence & Fauerbach, 2003).
Among patients with burn injuries, dissociation and a decrease in emotional responsiveness and feelings of detachment have been reported as occurring during the accident (Taal & Faber, 1998). According to the DSM-IV, PTSD has been found to be a common occurrence in patients with burn injuries, with prevalence rates reported as varying between 8% and 45%, while stress disorders in general has been reported as occurring in 18% to 33% of cases (El hamaoui, Yaalaoui, Chihabeddine, Boukind, & Moussaoui, 2002; Sadeghi-Bazargani et al., 2011).
In a sample of 60 patients with burn injuries, 23% met criteria for PTSD, while in a sample of 43 adult inpatients at a regional burn center, 22% were diagnosed with PTSD (El hamaoui et al., 2002; Roca, Spence & Munster, 1992). Despite the high prevalence rates of PTSD among patients with burn injuries, “PTSD remains a neglected entity by practitioners and remains therefore under-diagnosed,” according to El hamaoui and colleagues, who go on to note that “improvement of health and quality of life of these patients necessitates the earliest possible management” (2002, p. 649).
Symptoms must be present for one month to satisfy criteria for PTSD (APA, 2000). For most patients with burn injuries, PTSD-like symptoms may dissipate with time; however, for 5% to 25% of these patients, the symptoms become chronic (Lawrence & Fauerbach, 2003). In fact, evidence suggests that PTSD may have a tendency toward delayed onset in burn survivors, with onset usually occurring 3 to 6 months, and sometimes even a year, after the injury (Sadeghi-Bazarghani, 2011).
Looking at a sample of burn survivors two weeks post-discharge from the hospital, Sadeghi-Bazarghani and colleagues (2011) found that 20% had a positive PTSD screening; after three months, this increased to 31.5%. Similar findings demonstrated a tripled prevalence of PTSD among burn survivors between the times of discharge and the 4-month follow up (Yu & Dimsdale, 1999).
Further complicating the presentation of PTSD among burn survivors is the possibility that a substantial portion of patients may not meet full criteria for the diagnosis; however, the symptoms that are present may still significantly impact their quality of life (De Sousa, 2010). The nature of delayed onset and possible subclinical forms of PTSD among burn survivors illustrates the necessity for increasing awareness of risk factors among medical staff, given that medical professionals are provided opportunities to observe and screen patients during 3- and 6-month follow up examinations.
PTSD Risk Factor: Age
PTSD Risk Factor: Age
Age has been shown to have an association with the development of PTSD among burn survivors. Sadeghi-Bazarghani and colleagues (2011) found that a younger age at that time of the traumatic event appeared to predict a higher PTSD score after burn injury. Comparatively, El hamaoui and colleagues (2002) found that younger age (M=15.8 years) at the moment of the burn (as well as explosion of gas containers for cooking purposes) also appeared to be related to PTSD.
The element of age as a risk factor for PTSD may be due to the higher incidences of burn injuries among younger age groups, such as children and young adults. Another possible explanation has been the salient role of body image among younger age populations and the role of visible differences and physical appearance (Sadeghi-Bazarghani et al., 2011).
It is then imperative for medical staff to take particular note of younger patients with burn injuries, not only screening for risk of developing PTSD, but also to closely listen to younger patients questions and concerns, and using appropriate and effective communication skills to provide feedback about treatment outcomes (De Sousa, 2010).
PTSD Risk Factor: Gender
PTSD Risk Factor: Gender
The role of gender of burn survivors has been shown to be a potential predictor of risk factors for PTSD. Sadeghi-Bazarghani and colleagues (2011) found an association between PTSD and male gender in their study; however, they explained the higher prevalence of burn injuries among men as possibly accounting for these findings.
Overall, additional findings have indicated that individuals with acquired facial trauma such as burn injuries are more likely to be female, and that most psychological symptoms after facial trauma are experienced more often by women, due to the higher prevalence of concerns associated with physical appearance and disfigurement (De Sousa, 2010).
According to De Sousa (2010), facial trauma may lead to social withdrawal and isolation, and is often accompanied by anger toward the self or others as well as idealizing the pre-injury physical appearance. Previous findings indicated that 27% of patients with facial trauma developed PTSD seven weeks after the burn injury (Yu & Dimsdale, 1999).
Therefore, female gender may function as a risk factor, contingent on the value the individual places on physical appearance and the level of distress resulting from visible differences.
PTSD Risk Factor: Coping Strategies and Social Support
Some models of PTSD postulate that adjustment to trauma is based on a series of factors, including resilience-recovery variables such as coping strategies and social support (Lawrence & Fauerbach, 2003). Coping has been described as behaviors that function to protect individuals from psychological harm from adverse experiences (Lawrence & Fauerbach, 2003).
Coping strategies have been categorized as approach coping, which involves directly resolving the stressor, or avoidance coping, which attempts to avoid thinking about the stressor or associated affect (Lawrence & Fauerbach, 2003). An ambivalent coping style—that is, a coping style that combines both emotion avoidance with emotion approach—has been found to be a predictor of more severe PTSD (De Sousa, 2010; Lawrence & Fauerbach, 2003).
In addition, lack of social support has been shown to function as a risk factor for PTSD among burn survivors (Lawrence & Fauerbach, 2003; Sveen, Dyster-Aas, & Willebrand, 2009; Yu & Dimsdale, 1999). Furthermore, high social support has been associated with both positive mental and physical health outcomes, such as lessening the impact of trauma exposure (Lawrence & Fauerbach, 2003).
Similarly, the nature of the patient’s social support functions as a variable, which influences psychological adjustment to facial trauma such as burn injuries (De Sousa, 2010). Medical staff, therefore, must assess for the presence and role of the patient’s social support system, as well as observing the coping strategies utilized both by the patient and members of that support system, as potential risk factors for PTSD and health-related quality of life indicators.
Conclusion
For patients with burn injuries, the traumatic experience and suffering associated with serious burns may present with a wide host of physical and psychological challenges. In addition to intense pain associated with burn injuries, patients often experience psychological distress and trauma resulting from delirium during the hospitalization, physical appearance alterations, and medical treatment of wounds.
Due to the traumatic nature of serious burn injuries, patients have been demonstrated to be at high risk for PTSD, particularly among young females with poor coping strategies and low social support (De Sousa, 2010; Lawrence & Fauerbach, 2003; Sadeghi-Bazargani et al., 2011; Yu & Dimsdale, 1999).
The practitioners comprising the rehabilitation and plastic surgery team are responsible for providing a standard of care that helps maximize improvement in patients’ quality of life. However, psychosocial rehabilitation is often overlooked as integral part of patient treatment, particularly in patients with burn injuries who appear at high risk for PTSD.
Given the high prevalence of PTSD and trauma-related psychological distress among this population, plastic surgery and rehabilitation teams must increase awareness and psychoeducation regarding patient screening for psychological disturbances such as PTSD.
Successful treatment and management of PTSD is highly dependent on early detection. Given that medical practitioners may be among the few sources of social interaction to which burn survivors have access, it is critical that the medical team increase awareness of risk factors and training in screening for PTSD among patients with burn injuries.
Furthermore, patients identified as presenting for risk factors for PTSD and psychosocial disturbances may require additional feedback regarding the influence of psychological factors on quality of life and treatment adherence (De Sousa, 2010). According to De Sousa (2009), “one of the most important contributions that the treating surgeon can make to the care of patients is to take time to closely listen to their unique concerns and those of their families” (p. 203).
By increasing awareness, education, and training of assessment of risk factors for PTSD among medical practitioners, the rehabilitation and plastic surgery team is ensuring patient psychosocial rehabilitation and providing a much more holistic approach by which to improve client quality of life.
*Diagnostic criteria from DSM-IV are used here for consistency with the cited research. The more recent DSM-5 (APA, 2013) conceptualization of PTSD distinguishes between children under 6 years of age and others; includes a broadened definition of “exposure,” including directly experiencing or witnessing actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence, as well as learning that one of these types of events happened to someone with whom there is a close relationship or (for those 6 years of age and older) extreme exposure to aversive details of such an event.
Updated criteria require the presence of intrusive and avoidant symptoms, negative alternations in cognitions and mood, and marked alterations in arousal and reactivity. Duration must still be greater than one month; “with dissociative symptoms” has been added as a possible specifier; and “with delayed expression” has replaced “with delayed onset.