Complications of the hypercoagulable status in burn injury

Burn patients commonly exhibit signs of thrombogenicity, theoretically, puts them at risk for thromboembolic complications. However, the literature is controversial, and the real impact of these complications is yet unknown. We reviewed a series of 3331 burned patients to study the incidence of arterial thrombosis, deep venous thrombosis, and pulmonary thromboembolism. Ten patients presented with thrombotic complications, which accounted to a raw incidence of 0.3%. One complication occurred in the paediatric population (incidence of 0.1%) and nine in the adult population (incidence of 0.37%). There were three arterial thromboses (AT) of the common femoral artery, one in an 8 years old boy and two in two adult male patients. The other seven patients had deep venous thrombosis (DVT) of the inferior extremities and three of them presented with pulmonary thromboembolism (PTE). Thrombotic complications represented 3.38% of all deaths in our burn population. Despite the hypercoagulable status of burn patients, thrombotic complication and related mortality continue to have a low impact in this population. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd and ISBI. All rights reserved.