Prevalence and profile of persons with burn injuries in rural field practice area of Rajarajeswari Medical College and Hospital, Bengaluru

Abstract

Background: Burn injury is one of the common medical emergencies admitted to any hospital and is an important public health problem globally. Although most burn injuries are preventable, the general lack of safety consciousness, lack of knowledge on first aid measures, compounded by the absence of organized burn care at primary and secondary health-care level, hinder the curbing of this preventable problem. Objectives: (a) To estimate the prevalence of burn injuries in the rural field practice area of RajaRajeswari Medical College and (b) To determine the sociodemographic profile of burn injury victims and describe the burn injuries in the rural field practice area of RajaRajeswari Medical College. Subjects and Methods: A community-based cross-sectional study was carried out among 1220 randomly selected participants in the rural area using a semi-structured, pretested questionnaire. Data were analyzed adopting descriptive statistics, univariate and multivariate statistical techniques using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 22. Results: The prevalence of burn injuries was found to be 9.5% in the present study. Logistic regression analysis showed that various sociodemographic characteristics of participants such as age, type of family, educational status, and socioeconomic status had a statistically significant association with burn injuries. Conclusion: The prevalence of burn injuries was 9.5% among the study participants. There existed a statistically significant association between burn injuries and various sociodemographic determinants.