Burn severity and post-burn infertility in men

Abstract

Burn wounds are a common cause of much morbidity and misery, especially in low- and medium-income countries. A number of studies show that severe burns cause infertility from poor sperm production. The pathways leading to such infertility are not well understood, and it is not known how the severity of injury affects this post-burn infertility (PBI). We evaluated the relationship between sperm parameters and indices of burn severity, such as burn surface area and depth in 19 adults. Total sperm counts ranged from 0 to 160 million/ml, with a mean of 19.58+/-7.52 million/ml. About 60% of the subjects had total counts of 20 million/ml or less, falling into the clinically oligospermic range. We found only a weak correlation between infertility and both burn depth and burn surface area. There was, however, a fairly strong positive correlation between infertility and length of time between injury and participation in the study. The correlation coefficient was 0.560. Our findings suggest that PBI is progressive and not predicted by TBSA. Any measures to control it should be started early and be applied to burn patients across a wide range of clinical severity.