Abstract
Burn injuries represent a specific wound entity with unique clinical features which range from the difficulty of initial assessment to the long-term tendency to develop pathologic scars. For long time considered as acute wounds, burns are in fact wounds showing a long term evolution transforming them into chronic wounds, if inadequately managed. The pathophysiological changes in the burn wound are characterized by effects caused by heat per se and complex superimposed local as well as systemic alterations. Due to profound disturbances of the immunostatus in general burn wounds are highly susceptible to infections upon completed keratinization. A common consensus among burn specialists emerges considering that a burn wound has to be covered within a period of two to three weeks, justifying a dogma of rapid excision and grafting, a surgical approach popularized by surgeons since the 70′s. In fact, burn wounds which remained unhealed for several weeks or months, either due to skin graft infection or by accumulation of the high level of proteases included the wound after 3 to 4 weeks of non-healing.
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Teot, L., Otman, S., Brancati, A., Mittermayr, R. (2012). Burn wound healing: Pathophysiology. In: Kamolz, LP., Jeschke, M.G., Horch, R.E., Küntscher, M., Brychta, P. (eds) Handbook of Burns. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-0315-9_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-0315-9_4
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