285 In Hot Water: Cooking Related Burn Injuries in the ED

Many of the burn injuries evaluated in emergency departments are directly related to cooking. A large majority of these injuries do not require admission to a burn center. Certain foods (or the preparation thereof) may be associated with more severe burns. This review of recent annual data from ED visits seeks to identify and stratify these foods and beverages by causative agent and severity of injury. Institutional review board approval was obtained and retrospective review of ED visits in which burn was listed as admitting problem was performed from 10/2017 to 9/2018 accruing 390 patient visits. Data collected included age, gender, type of food that caused the injury, % TBSA, and whether they were admitted or discharged. Exclusion criteria included contact injuries from hot stove-top, work-related injuries, chemical, and electrical injuries. Of the 390 patients reviewed, 283 were excluded from this study (non-cooking related injuries), this resulted in a population of 107 patients. The mean age was 32 years old, 38 were male (35.51%) and 69 female (64.49%). Overall averaged TBSA % burn was 2.22%. Of the 107 patients in this cohort 14 were admitted to the burn unit (13.08%) and 93 patients were discharged (87.85%). Nineteen patients had burns associated with coffee (17.67%), 18 burned from soup (16.82%), 14 from tea (13.08%), 8 from water (7.48%) with the remainder due to various others. TBSA was averaged by the offending substance and found to 3.33% for soup, 2.6% for water, 2.38% for coffee, and 1.95% for tea. Of these injuries 71 (65.74%) were scald injuries from water based foods, 23 (21.3%) from foods cooked in/with oil, with the remaining 13 (12.04%) due to contact/other burn injuries. The majority of burn patients (71.43%) admitted had injuries due to water-based burns with 14.29% of each oil and other burns requiring admission. Coffee, tea, and soup all seemed to be the most prevalent causative agents accounting for the vast majority of burns seen by our ED in the last calendar year. All of these are water based scald injuries, which also account for the majority of burn admissions in this population. Interestingly, this is discordant with burn injuries seen in our inpatient setting in which the majority of injuries seem to be due to oil-based injuries likely from the higher stored thermal energy in such substances. Epidemiological review of a commonly seen cohort of patients encountered in burn and non-burn centers across the nation.