Burns- Symptoms, Causes, Treatment and Home Remedies
What is Burns?
Burn is a kind of injury to the skin for reasons such as heat, electricity, fire, chemicals, and radiation. Burns can lead to shock if the patient burns upto 15% of the total body surface. Scalding is a specific type of burning that is caused by hot fluids or gasses.A cold burn is a kind of burn which arises when the skin is in contact with a low-temperature body.
Types of Burns
There are three types of burns:
- first-degree burns to outer layer of the skin causing pain and redness and swelling,
- second-degree burns to both outer and inner layer of skin causing more or less pain and blistering,
- third-degree burns extend into deeper tissues due to charring of the skin causing hardening of the skin and the skin becomes senseless.
Causes of Burns
- Excess exposure to the sun
- steam, hot bath water, tipped-over coffee cups, cooking fluids, etc
- Burns to your airways can be caused by inhaling smoke, steam, superheated air, or toxic fumes, often in a poorly ventilated space.
- dry heat like fire,
What are the symptoms of Burns?
- blisters,
- severe pain,
- redness,
- swelling
- look waxy white, leathery, brown, or charred in severe cases
Burns Treatment
- Take off the clothing from the body except the one from the affected area.
- Run the cool but not cold water on the affected area to reduce the pain and make a bandage over it, if it is first-degree.
- Take an over-the-counter pain reliever
- Get a medical attention soon if the burn is second or third-degree.
- Local anesthetic such as lidocaine can be considered to relief the pain.
- Elevate the body part that is burned above the level of the heart. Protect the burnt area from pressure and friction.
- Make sure that the person is no longer in contact with smoldering materials. However, do not remove burnt clothing that is stuck to the skin.
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