I was reading about some burn victims from summer fires in Greece, and some succumbed to their burns more than 3 months after they were originally exposed to the flames. Shouldn’t they be in the clear at that point given burn wounds heal over time?
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Burn wounds take much longer to heal than your typical cut. Infection in the wound would usually be what would kill them after that much time has passed depending on the severity and location of the wound.
Infections; severe burns can also lead to kidney failure. Being on a ventilator a long time for an extensive burn puts you at huge risk for pneumonia. So many things can fail when you are dealing with severe burns
Infections, organ failure, cardiac failure, etc, etc. Burns cause traumatic injury to large areas of the body. It can often take enormous amounts of energy to heal. Bodies just can’t keep up.
The skin is our largest organ and does a LOT of work.
I don’t think I have another organ that has to deal with more damage than my skin, and that is what it’s there for.
When the skin is burned it leaves the soft squishy insides open to the outside world, allowing all kinds of infection and nasty stuff to enter the body.
Burns are really nasty things to treat and heal. When your upper layers of skin get burned away, bacteria, viruses, ect. can get in with little effort. Burns take much longer to heal than other injuries as well because of how much area is damaged and the nature of that damage. Getting viable skin grafts is also very hard, especially with 2nd and 3rd degree burns, which makes it difficult to treat.
Tl;dr you’re left with a pretty large chunk of your body that diseases which normally might not have even gotten into normally can just walk into and cause a lot of damage.
I worked with a guy that lost 12 friends in a power plant explosion in detroit some time in the 90s, i think. Most of them survived the fire, but died later. They were talking to each other after the fire. They died either from infections or pnumonia or organ failure.
Lesson learned from my sons 3rd degree burns. Protein is your friend. If you have small burns, jack up your protein intake drastically.
Always see a doctor for more serious issues but I am betting they will green light a protein increase.
This is regarding severe and extensive burns.
The ones who die months later fro their burns will have been extremely unwell between the initial burn and death. It won’t be that they recovered and then got again, at least really not likely.
Our skin has lots of different functions. In the time immediately after a very extensive burn: the leading causes of death are smoke inhalation lung damage or overwhelming infection (our skin is a really effective barrier). But the body is put under further stress because the skin being intact stops us loosing a lot of water from our body, likewise lots of electrolytes, and helps us regulate our temperature. In extensive burns these issue would be massive
If we survive, the skin will start to heal, areas will get skin grafts (if there is enough unaffected areas to take a graft from) and any other closing techniques possible. But any ongoing issues in other organs may be ongoing. Kidneys may have packed in for multiple reasons, and the kidney is a big thing in water balance in the body. With a lot of skin that is there not functioning properly (the badly scarred skin won’t sweat normally) this makes it even more difficult to manage that. You’ll also have lost a lot of muscle mass, likely be malnourished from so long presumably in ITU so body functions compromised (there is a lot artificial nutrition can do but it’s not perfect esp in a person who continues to be very sick). You may still have tubes and lines in your body and they are a potential entry point for infection. All of this adds up to a very poorly working body that something simple that a healthy body to cope with finally getting you (eg chest infection).
Many responses mention organ failure. What causes this organ failure?
Alot of people don’t think about it like this but think of what happens to a piece of pork or chicken when u put it on a searing hot pan, that meat is now cooked and changed its not the same anymore, when u have severe burns ur flesh is cooked its cells are basically destroyed so it can take forever to repair sometimes with the aid of treatments and even then sometimes it just can’t go back to normal and the infection from the cooked flesh kills you
If u get a simple cut the cells around there are still living so if the wound can be shut or if its thin enough ur body can heal itself
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