OCR Text |
Show Advice on Your Health By Morris Fiihbein, Editor, Journal American Medical Association Cases of extensive body burns ' are likely to result In death. Seldom is there recovery for anyone any-one who has as much as one-half of his body surface burned. Children Chil-dren die frequently when even less than one-half of the skin is burned. Death is caused principally by other conditions which result, such as pneumonia, Inflammation Inflamma-tion of the kidneys, ulcers of the Intestines and shock. The shock reaction is manifested mani-fested by a sudden weakening of the pulse and a fall of the blood pressure. Gradually the circula- ' tion stops. The legs and arms become cold and blue and the blood becomes thick and dark. It was once thought that these changes were the result of poison absorbed from the burned skin by the body and that this poisoning poison-ing could be prevented by the use of tannic acid treatment. It was thought that this treatment held the poisonous substances In the area of the burn and prevented pre-vented their absorption into the circulation. Now surgeons In the medical school of Indiana university have come to the conclusion that death is the result of a reaction of the small blood vessels to the injury by heat. The small blood vessels dilate, the circulation stagnates, and the fluid material of the blood escapes from the small vessels Into the tissue spaces. Thus, the patient dies of shock due to loss of blood fluid which Is so rapid that nothing can be done to replace It. On the basis of this conception, they have introduced the idea of replacing the blood as rapidly as possible after a burn, so that this condition of shock cannot develop. de-velop. They described the case of a 15-year-old girl who was burned when her evening dress caught . fire at a ball. The pain of the serious burns was stopped by placing her into a tub of 1 per cent salt water at body temperature. tempera-ture. She remained In this bath for one and a half hours. Then she was placed in a bed with sterile sheets and dressings moistened with salt solution. In order to overcome the loss of fluid, she was given at once a pint of salt solution of the same concentration concentra-tion as the blood directly Into the veins. She was also given transfusions trans-fusions of blood at the end of eight hours and all of her fluid was given In the form of a salt solution mixed with, glucose solution. solu-tion. . Other blood transfusions were given later. It was finally decided, de-cided, however, to discard the giving of whole blood and to give only the fluid material of the blood with the substances which it contains aside from the red blood cells. Continuous treatment treat-ment and application of oxygen at times resulted In gradual improvement im-provement and eventual recov- . ery in this case. |