Shriners of North America

Last modified: 10/26/06

   Welcome to the Pediatric Burn Injury Rehabilitation Model System administered by UTMB and Shriners Burn Hospital in Galveston, Texas.

   In 1993, The National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) sponsored three burn injury model systems for a period of  four years.  In 1997, NIDRR enhanced the above priorities to include children.  Now, there are four Burn Injury Rehabilitation Model Systems in the United States:

  Johns Hopkins University - Bayview Medical Center
  University of Texas Medical Branch - Shriners Burn Hospital
  University of Texas - Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas
  University of Washington - Harborview Medical Center

   NIDRR funds these Burn Injury Rehabilitation Model Systems at four Centers of  Excellence. The purpose of the program is to study and characterize the outcome of burn injury with particular attention to improving the rehabilitation of burn survivors, including children. In addition, a national burn outcome data center is funded at the University of Colorado,  Denver, Colorado.
It is called the Burn Model System Projects Database Coordination Center.
  
   The UTMB project improves outcomes for severely burned children by instituting and evaluating two modifications to traditional rehabilitation:  (1) an intensive inpatient rehabilitation program including active resistance exercise;  (2) long term administration of anabolic agents.
Effectiveness is assessed by comparison with functional outcomes achieved in traditional outpatient rehab. programs.  Results indicate improvement in strength, endurance and bone density with these modifications.  The project also assesses use of pressure to subdue the effects of scar formation.  The project's Community Reintegration Program operates in conjunction with outreach clinics and school reintegration programs.  The project also maintains a longitudinal database that includes measures of cardiopulmonary function, growth and maturation, bone density, range of motion, reconstructive needs and psychosocial adjustment.  This data is part of the national database, as well as being used for local data analyses.

   The UTMB Burn Model System program in the Shriners Burn Hospital has accomplished some important goals.  The intensive and inclusive rehabilitation program should be noted as the cornerstone achievement of this model systems project, for it promises to improve the lives of young survivors of massive burn injuries in many dramatic ways.  The pressure garment study also promises to have dramatic and revolutionary impact upon burn care.  If results continue as they have to date, and strong pressure seems to make no difference in the outcome of much of the resultant scarring, the discomfort of burned children and the discord caused in families of burned children around the issue of compliance will be greatly diminished.

   The finding of diminished social skills among pediatric burn survivors has pointed us in the direction of an important intervention that we are now testing in a separate study of adolescent survivors who are 'troubled'.  We have also contributed importantly to the overall study of burn care and rehabilitation by adding to the national database.  We have supplied data on 357 patients, accounting for at least 40% of the pediatric patient data in the database.  Collectively with the other Burn Model Systems, we are reaching the point of having enough pediatric data to answer important questions heretofore unanswerable because of limitations of site-specific sample sizes.

Top