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Electrocutions are a particular type of trauma, usually affecting young active people, leading to high morbidity and mortality rates in extensive injured patients. Those patients require complex, multidisciplinary treatment in specialized burn centers. We conducted a three-year retrospective study in the Burn Unit of the Clinical Emergency Hospital Bucharest, Romania, aiming to identify different factors that characterize electrical injuries, with the goal to improve our clinical practice, in order to decrease overall complications, the morbidity and mortality rates and obtain an optimal functional prognosis for those severely injured patients. Patient-related and injury-related parameters were analyzed, and particularities observed in our burn unit were noted. A clear understanding of the physiopathology of those injuries and their complications is essential for providing an optimal therapeutic strategy. Rapid initiation of systemic supportive measures, accurate diagnostic and an adequate surgical treatment, correctly conducted, are essential for improving the vital and functional prognostic of patients who suffer electric injuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Burn injuries are unique in comparison to other types of trauma because of their severity and major systemic impact produced by extensive lesions with disfunctions that can persist even several years after the injury. Multiple complications can occur during burn injury evolution, from which infections are the most severe and the most frequently encountered, requiring adequate diagnosis and treatment. In most burn centers, increased mortality rates associate with severe burn injuries aggravated by the development of sepsis. There are multiple sources of infections in burned patients: lungs, wounds, catheters, gastrointestinal and urinary tract. Pathogens are often multi-resistant bacteria but also fungi and viruses appear as opportunistic infections. The main goal is represented by prevention of organ dysfunction development through specific supportive measures that avoid its onset. Early excision of the burn eschar and wound grafting is essential for patient outcome, decreasing duration of hospitalization, infectious risk and mortality. As a principle, antibiotic treatment in burn infectious complications is started empirically, with broad spectrum agents if the results of microbiological cultures are not available and immediately after the antibiogram is available, targeted antibiotic is introduced. De-escalation strategy is promoted in order to prevent antimicrobial resistance: narrow spectrum drugs with proven efficacy on determined germs are administered, avoiding if possible, reserve antibiotics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]