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. 2020 Feb;26(1):24-30.
doi: 10.1136/injuryprev-2018-042881. Epub 2019 Feb 21.

Incidence of medically attended paediatric burns across the UK

Katie Davies  1 , Emma Louise Johnson  1 , Linda Hollén  1   2   3 , Hywel M Jones  1 , Mark D Lyttle  4   5   6 , Sabine Maguire  1   3 , Alison Mary Kemp  7   3 ; PERUKI
Collaborators, Affiliations

Incidence of medically attended paediatric burns across the UK

Katie Davies et al. Inj Prev. 2020 Feb.

Abstract

Objective: Childhood burns represent a burden on health services, yet the full extent of the problem is difficult to quantify. We estimated the annual UK incidence from primary care (PC), emergency attendances (EA), hospital admissions (HA) and deaths.

Methods: The population was children (0-15 years), across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland (NI), with medically attended burns 2013-2015. Routinely collected data sources included PC attendances from Clinical Practice Research Datalink 2013-2015), EAs from Paediatric Emergency Research in the United Kingdom and Ireland (PERUKI, 2014) and National Health Services Wales Informatics Services, HAs from Hospital Episode Statistics, National Services Scotland and Social Services and Public Safety (2014), and mortality from the Office for National Statistics, National Records of Scotland and NI Statistics and Research Agency 2013-2015. The population denominators were based on Office for National Statistics mid-year population estimates.

Results: The annual PC burns attendance was 16.1/10 000 persons at risk (95% CI 15.6 to 16.6); EAs were 35.1/10 000 persons at risk (95% CI 34.7 to 35.5) in England and 28.9 (95% CI 27.5 to 30.3) in Wales. HAs ranged from 6.0/10 000 person at risk (95% CI 5.9 to 6.2) in England to 3.1 in Wales and Scotland (95% CI 2.7 to 3.8 and 2.7 to 3.5, respectively) and 2.8 (95% CI 2.4 to 3.4) in NI. In England, Wales and Scotland, 75% of HAs were aged <5 years. Mortality was low with 0.1/1 000 000 persons at risk (95% CI 0.06 to 0.2).

Conclusions: With an estimated 19 574 PC attendances, 37 703 EAs (England and Wales only), 6639 HAs and 1-6 childhood deaths annually, there is an urgent need to improve UK childhood burns prevention.

Keywords: burn; child; epidemiology.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interest: No authors have conflicts of interest relevant to this article to disclose. The corresponding author has the right to grant on behalf of all authors and does grant on behalf of all authors, an exclusive licence (or non-exclusive for government employees) on a worldwide basis to the BMJ Group and co-owners or contracting owning societies (where published by the BMJ Group on their behalf), and its Licensees to permit this article (if accepted) to be published in Injury Prevention and any other BMJ Group products and to exploit all subsidiary rights, as set out in our licence.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Estimated annual number of childhood burns in the UK from 2013 to 2015. All sources used age range 0–15 years apart from mortality data where children were 0–14 years. estimates for hospital admissions (HAs), HAs to specialised burns units and emergency attendances are based on data from 2014. *HAs to specialised burns unit and emergency attendance estimates relate to England and Wales only. †HAs relate to England, Wales and Scotland only.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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