- M A Megahed: Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Al-Nahrain College of Medicine, Baghdad, Iraq.
Inhalation injury greatly increases the incidence of respiratory failure and the acute respiratory distress syndrome. It is also the cause of most early deaths in burn victims. The aim of our research was to study the incidence, early diagnosis, complications, and management of inhalation injury and to discuss the relation between inhalation injury and death in burn patients.This study included 130 burn patients with inhalation injury admitted to Menoufiya University Hospital Burn Center, Egypt, from January 2004 to April 2008 (61 males and 69 females). We found that the presence of inhalation injury, increasing burn size, and advancing age were all associated with increased mortality (p < 0.01). The incidence of inhalation injury in our study was 46.3% (130 patients were identified as having inhalation injury out of 281). The overall mortality for patients with inhalation injury was 41.5% (54 patients out of 130) compared with 7.2% (11 patients out of 151) for patients without inhalation injury. These statistical data make it clear that inhalation injury is an important factor for the prediction of mortality in burn patients. Approximately 80% of fire-related deaths are due not to the burn injury to the airway but to the inhalation of toxic products, especially carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide gases. Inhalation injury is generally caused by thermal burns, mostly confined to the upper airways.Major airway, pulmonary, and systemic complications may occur in cases of inhalation injury and thus increase the incidence of burn patient mortality.