None listed
Conditions
Brief summary
This project is an observational prospective longitudinal cohort study with a correlational analysis to quantitatively explore the relationship between burns outcomes and domains such as injury, treatment, personal (individual) and social (environmental) factors. The objective is to identify factors that impede quality of life outcomes post-major burn in adults, in order to inform multidisciplinary clinical models of care that can target the most powerful determinants of outcome. There has been a paucity of research specifically investigating the relationship between the social factors identified to increase risk of burns and the quality of life outcomes associated with these factors. It has been found that injury severity and burns treatment factors are less predictive of injury outcome than social factors such as level of education and income. However, the reliability of this evidence has been limited due to retrospective study designs and small sample sizes. The aim of this study is to prospectively evaluate various factors that have been previously evidenced to influence aspects of recovery such as functional or mental health outcomes. It will endeavour to determine which of the variables are significantly associated with and have the greatest explanatory power to predict long term quality of life outcomes. These will be investigated in terms of individual outcomes as well as broader societal burden of injury outcomes. In this study, patients admitted to the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital following a burn injury will be enrolled with consent. They will be invited to answer a researcher-led 15 minute questionnaire within the first two weeks of their burn injury or when they resume capacity to consent. For a proportion of participants there will be an initial period of incapacity due to sedation and intubation or delirium. This survey will be about life before their burn injury. They will then be phoned by the researcher at 3 months, 6 months and 12 months post-burn to answer further survey questions which are anticipated to take 45 minutes per time-point. Other injury and treatment related information will be sourced from the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital Burns Database and the medical record, with participant consent.
Interventions
Consenting hospitalised burns patients are contacted 3 months, 6 months and 12 months post-injury to measure Quality of Life outcomes; encompassing functional, psychological, social and life satisfaction domains, as well as health utility.
Sponsors
Martha Druery
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Age
18 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
No
Inclusion criteria
1. Admitted for at least 24 hours as an initial hospitalisation to the Professor Stuart Pegg Adult Burns Unit at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital. 2. Sustained a major burn injury defined as affecting greater than 10% of the Total Body Surface Area unless affecting the hands, feet, face or perineum, the presence of airway or inhalation injury, or any burn injury requiring specialist multi-disciplinary care in a burn centre. 3. Aged 18 years or over in order to legally provide consent for participation.
Exclusion criteria
1. Participants who lack the requisite medico-legal capacity to provide consent to participate — for example, those with a significant acquired brain injury, dementia, congenital intellectual disability, cognitive impairment, psychosis/incapacitating psychiatric illness. This determination will be sought from treating medical staff. The selected self-report measures have not been validated for proxy reporting, precluding the inclusion of incapacitated participants. 2. Participants who are being treated in the burns unit for skin disorders or conditions that are not related to a burn/thermal injury. 3. Burns patients who are admitted for subsequent treatment of a previously sustained injury. 4. Burns patients who are not domiciled in Australia for the 12-month period of follow-up.
Outcome results
None listed