I was wondering if healing from severe burns, like 90% of the body 3 degrees, works different for children. After all, they have to grow up and the skin has to stretch enough, and they have faster cell replacement, right? Does this reduces the permanent damage?
In: Biology
In general for any given ailment or injury, children heal far better than adults, but there are limits. When someone has 90% third degree burns their chances of survival are very slim, less than 15%, and more like 5%-10%. On account of their lower body mass, children are more vulnerable to some effects of burns, so their odds of survival might be lower than even that.
So while it’s possible for the kid to survive, they would still be drastically injured, and probably lose mobility and independence. They would be in pain for the rest of their life, and require a truly staggering number of surgeries.
You picked a really extreme case though, if you look a bit deeper it turns out that mortality from severe burns *is* lower overall in children. [One study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4359665/) identified 40% coverage as the inflection point in mortality for adults, but for pediatric patients that number jumped to 60%.
So tl;dr Children are more likely to be badly burned, but they can survive more burning; still few people can survive burns of the severity you described. As far as recovery a child would still be drastically altered, much as an adult would, but outcomes would vary by the individual.
Latest Answers