Bathroom scald burns in Queensland Children Hobia Gole a, * , Roy Kimble a, b , Kellie Stockton b a Pegg Leditschke Paediatric Burns Centre, Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital, Brisbane, Australia b Centre for Children’s Burns and Trauma Research, University of Queensland, Australia a b s t r a c t Aim: To evaluate the current characteristics of bathroom scald injuries in Queensland Children. Method: Data was collected from patients who presented with a bathroom scald injury to the Stuart Pegg Paediatric Burns Centre at the Royal Children’s Hospital and Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital, Brisbane from January 2013 to December 2014. Results: Bathroom scald burns represented 2.6% of total burns cases with an inpatient rate of 39%. The family home is the location of injury in 84% of cases and in 79% the patient was aged 2 years of age or younger. Total body surface area ranged from 0.5% to 20% with a median of 1.75% (IQR 0.63, 3.38%). In our study 8% of patients underwent grafting and 24% received follow up for scar management. Injuries occurred in rental properties in 47% of tempering valve survey respondents. The rate of installation of tempering valves was 23%. Discussion: Bathroom scald burns continue to be over-represented in inpatient data. Tempering valves were not consistently installed after injury, this intervention would require further legislation to be an effective prevention strategy. Conclusion: This study provides important insights into paediatric bathroom scald injuries and will assist with the development of prevention strategies. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd and ISBI. All rights reserved. a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Accepted 27 September 2016 Available online xxx Keywords: Paediatric Scald Burn Bathroom 1. Introduction Scald injuries are the most common paediatric burn [1 –3]. Hot water and hot beverages are the two most common causal agents [2]. Bathroom scald injuries account for 5 –10% of paediatric burn admissions [3,4]. Burns can lead to significant psychological and physical consequences for the patient and their families [5 –7]. Legislation was introduced in Queensland in 1999 requiring all new and replacement hot water systems to be fitted with a temperature control device ensuring that the water is delivered at a maximum temperature of 50  C [8]. In adult skin, transepiderminal skin necrosis occurs in 5min at 50  C but is reduced to 40s at 54  C [9]. The time to injury is less in children [9,10]. This demonstrates that small changes in temperature can correspond to a significant change in injury severity [9,10]. The legislation that governs these safety measures, the Plumbing and Drainage Act of 2002, is currently under review by the Queensland Government [8]. This study is also a timely review of a previous study published by Davies et al. which evaluated bathroom scalds in Queensland Children in 2003 [10]. Bathroom scald injuries are of interest because they occur during a routine daily activity. We chose to focus this study on this particular form of burns injury to evaluate the effect of legislation and also the changes in injury patterns over a ten * Corresponding author at: Pegg Leditschke Paediatric Burns Centre, Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital, PO Box 3474, South Brisbane, Qld 4101, Australia. E-mail addresses: hobia.gole@uqconnect.edu.au, royk@uq.edu.au (H. Gole), k.stockton@uq.edu.au (K. Stockton). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.burns.2016.09.029 0305-4179/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd and ISBI. All rights reserved. b u r n s x x x ( 2 0 1 6 ) x x x – x x x JBUR 5089 No. of Pages 4 Please cite this article in press as: H. Gole, et al., Bathroom scald burns in Queensland Children, Burns (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.burns.2016.09.029 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect jo u rn al h o mep age: w ww .elsevier .co m /loc ate/b u rn s