Senior doctors working at various tertiary level hospitals of city for infection control on Wednesday urged healthcare workers including doctors to adopt simple and cost-effective steps to minimise infection risk among burns patients.
They also stressed on doctors, nurses and other paramedical staff exposed to burns patients to take precautionary measures for their own safety from infection and needle pricks etc as well.
The seminar on "Management & Infection control in burns patients" was organised jointly by Friends of Burns Centre and Infectious Disease Society of Pakistan (IDSP) here at Burns Centre, Civil Hospital Karachi.
Dr Fatima Nauman, Consultant Microbiologist and Infection Control at Sindh Institute of Urology Transplant, Dr Altaf Ahmed, Head of Microbiology and Infection Control at Liaquat National Hospital, Dr Mazhar Nizam, Director Burns Centre at Patel Hospital, Dr Afia Zafar, Head of Infection Control at Agha Khan University Hospital and Dabir-ur-Rehman, Executive Director of Burns Centre, Civil Hospital Karachi spoke on the topic.
They said infection remained the major cause of morbidity and deaths in burns' patients, as 50 to 70percent patients died just of infection during hospital stay.
"Infection in burns unit, usually transmit through hands, which are the most important, hydrotherapy and environment etc. Duration of hospitalisation, size of wound, other illnesses and nutrition are other risk factors for burns patient," they told.
"Change in wound character is very important. It is necessary to diagnose the infection at earliest and its treatment initiated. There are several diagnosis modalities available including wound swab, plate culture, culture of debrided tissues, quantitative wound culture, histopathological examination, which is very important. Bacteria causing infection vary from place to place," they added.