Following significant advances in medical science, patients with burns that involve as much as 95% of their total body surface area, can now survive. This was achieved over the last 80 years with advances in burn resuscitation, critical care, early surgical intervention and intensive physical therapy programmes.
Unfortunately, research into scarring does not match the tremendous improvement in survival following burn injury, and the quality of studies that have been conducted were hindered by a lack of validated, objective tools used to grade scars. The subjective tools that were used are prone to individual clinician bias, hence findings are not consistent.
The objectives of the project are:
Primary objective:
- To investigate the accuracy of the objective global scar scale in differentiating hypertrophic scars from normal skin at different stages of scar remodelling until maturation.
Secondary objectives:
- To assess the acceptability of the global scar score with clinicians and patients.
- To correlate objective scar assessment tools with subjective measures.