Miss Amira Allahham¹

¹Fiona Wood Foundation, Crawley, Australia

Abstract:

Paediatric burns account for a third of burn admissions in Australia, thus understanding the quality-of-life outcomes after a non-severe burn in children is important. This retrospective cohort study describes three paediatric cohorts from Western Australia with burns covering less than 20% TBSA and characterises: 1. The quality-of-life outcomes measured using the Paediatric quality of life survey (PedsQL) at three months post-burn, and 2. The differences in scoring the psychosocial function between patients and parents during early recovery (~ six months) and late recovery (>1 year). PedsQLs consist of a parent report and a patient report with a physical function domain (PF) and a psychosocial function domain (PSF). For the first aim, parent-report scores were significantly different between age groups (PF: p = 0.002, PSF: p = 0.001, respectively), burn cause (PF: p = 0.004, PSF: p = 0.005, respectively), and socioeconomic status groups for the PSF (patient: p = 0.015, parent: p = 0.032, respectively), and 16.46% of paediatric burn patients had critically low quality of life scores. The second aim showed that during early recovery, parents reported poorer PSF for younger children (p = 0.01), higher socioeconomic status (p = 0.05), and significantly different scores for female patients (p < 0.01). In the late recovery cohort, only the age at burn had an effect where parents had lower scores for older patients (p = 0.03). This data will allow health professionals to accurately assess patients’ quality of life to provide them with services that can aid in their recovery.

Biography:

Amira is a PhD student from UWA. Her project investigates the effect of burn injuries on mental health by exploring a range of techniques including testing behaviour in animal models, RNA sequencing, lipid analysis, and quality of life surveys for paediatric patients to understand their quality of life after burns.