Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia

Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia
Corso di laurea in infermieristica - Sede di Modena

Abstract

The aim of my research has been to obtain as many information as possible about the airways management in the treating of a burned patient. I focused on correct airways management and stabilisation, trying to assess both the advantages and disadvantages of a possible intubation, tracheotomy, bronchoscopy and of a non invasive ventilation, in order to define which method may may grant the patient the best comfort and the maintenance of good life parametres. I focused on oxygen saturation before the admission into hospital and soon afterwords.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: to perform a systematic literature review, I firstly used grey literature, consulting the most important search engines like Google Scholar, Google Books as well as more general web sites on the Internet; after that I consulted primary data banks as PubMed, Chinal and UptoDATE. The terms and the key words I used were the following: Airway, Management, Burn, Injury, Inahalation.

RESULTS: After a first research I found sixteen articles regarding my subject matter.
Among these sixteen articles, six were rejected because three of them were about pediatric management, one was about the maintenance of an adequate saturation until the admission but not specifically in burned patients, another one only treated facial burns and not airways management. The last one regarded the increasing risk of VAP onset in a burned patient given the high risk of infections.
During my research, I only considered articles regarding the adult patient management, in English or Italian language, which have been published between 2007 and 2014.

These articles have been analyzed and revised, and my purpose has been to make such a debated question clearer and more understandable.