Section I: INTRODUCTION

Major changes in body metabolism occur as the result of the stress of a burn injury.  Every burn patient develops metabolic changes, the degree depending on the degree of the burn insult.

This response leads to potentially deleterious changes in body composition, namely loss of body protein as well as a hyper-metabolic catabolic state.  To understand these alterations it is first necessary to define normal body composition and normal metabolic activity.  A comparison can then be made with the response to starvation and “the stress response to a burn.  Understanding that the marked changes in metabolism with “stress” are due to an altered hormonal environment and the response to inflammation, will provide the information needed for clinical judgment. Treatment modalities will be much more logical and be based on concept recognition rather than simply  reacting to problems as they develop.

	Smaller burns also initiate the "stress response"