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Chapter
3: Condition
CONDITION:_____GOOD
______SERIOUS
______CRITICAL
The stated condition is a lay term that
conveys to family, referring institutions, and the media a
sense of the patient’s prognosis.
Although several descriptions are
available, for practical purposes these can be limited to :
GOOD:
These patients are expected to survive
SERIOUS:
All patients that require resuscitation but are stable
and
expected to survive.
CRITICAL:
All patients who are unstable or are not expected to
survive.
Determination
of prognosis
There are three risk factors for death:
1.
Age greater than 60 years
2.
TBSA burn >40%
3.
Inhalational injury.
These factors are cumulative.
As a guide, the decision as to which condition to assign the
patient may be helped by reference to a recent study. In this
a mortality formula predicted 0.3 percent, 3 percent, 33
percent, or approximately 90 percent mortality depending on
whether zero, one, two, or three risk factors are present.
Ryan
CM, Schoenfeld DA, Thorpe WP, Sheridan RL, Cassem EH,
Tompkins RG. Objective estimates of the probability of
death from burn injuries. N Engl J Med 1998;338:362-6.
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