Work-related burn injuries in Ontario, Canada: A follow-up 10-year retrospective study

Work-related burn injuries contribute to a quarter of all burns in the USA. In 2009, the provincial Workplace Safety and Insurance Board reported 64,824 work-related injuries that resulted in time lost, 1188 injuries (2%) were a result of burns. There were two previous studies performed at a regional burn centre (1984-1990 and 1998-2000) that examined incidence and characteristics of work-related burns. There was no significant change between these two groups. The purpose of this study was to identify the recent pattern of work-related burns from 2001 to 2010 and to compare it to the previous studies. During the study period, 1427 patients were admitted for an acute injury to the regional burn centre. Of these, 330 were due to a work-related incident (23%). The mean age of patients was 40.5±11.9 years, 95% were male. The mean total body surface area burn was 11.9±16.2%. The most common mechanism of injury was flame (32.7%) followed by electrical (27%) and scald (19.7%), inhalation injury was present in 4.8% of patients and the mortality was 1.8%. Our study shows a significant decrease in the incidence in work-related burns treated at the regional burn centre (23.1% vs. 28.2% vs. 30.2%, p<0.01), flame burns have now become the leading cause of injury, there was a significant reduction in inhalation injury (4.8% vs. 23% vs. 14.8%, p<0.00001), and mortality over time (1.8% vs. 4% vs. 6.7% p=0.02). These findings strongly suggest a change in the cause of work-related burns, improvement in burn care, and that prevention strategies may have been more effective.