Instant noodles tied to majority of pediatric scald burns
USA: A team of researchers from the Pritzker School of Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA, have concluded that the incidence of pediatric instant noodle burns is higher among Black/African American children and from neighbourhoods as well. These children have the lowest SES and opportunity level, said the researchers in their study entitled, “ Pediatric instant noodle burns: A ten-year single-centre retrospective study.”
Study findings were recently published in Burns, the Journal of the International Society for Burn Injuries.
Children are prone to scald injuries, and hot beverages/foods are often implicated. The most common are the burns from instant noodles. These are a target for the prevention of burns.
A team of researchers studied the frequency, demographics, outcomes, and circumstances of such burns to establish a better future guide for education and prevention.
The study included 790 pediatric patients under 18 years of age who were diagnosed with scald injury (2010-2020) and were admitted to the University of Chicago Burn Center.
Researchers compared burns caused by instant noodles versus other scald burns.
The study results could be summarised as follows:
- Two hundred forty-five patients constituting 31 %, had scald burns due to instant noodles.
- The patients with instant noodle burns were older, 5.4 vs 3.8 years and likely to be male, 51 % vs 54 %.
- Patients with burns due to instant noodles were mainly Black/African American, constituting 90.6 % vs 75.2 %.
- The instant noodle-burned patients lived in zip codes with a lower average childhood opportunity index score, 9.9 vs 14.6. these were not supervised at the time of injury, 37 % vs 21 %.
- Relating to the area involved, the instant noodle burns were smaller, with 3.6 % total body surface area (TBSA) vs 5.8 % TBSA. There were fewer chances of requiring operative intervention, 29 % vs 41 %.
- Those with Instant noodle burns had a relatively shorter stay, 4.2 days vs 6.4 days.
- The length of stay (adjusted) and complications rates were similar, 1.7 days/%TBSA vs 1.5 days/%TBSA and 10 % vs 15 %.
The researchers said one-third of all pediatric scald burns were Instant noodle burns. Though these injuries are less severe, they require hospitalization and operative intervention.
These injuries disproportionately affected Black/African American patients and neighbourhoods with lower socioeconomic status.
Our study’s findings highlight the importance of these “preventive” burn injuries, which would be successfully managed by implementing focused burn prevention efforts in reducing these common and severe injuries, they wrote.
Further reading:
Pediatric instant noodle burns: A ten-year single centre retrospective study.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0305417923000050
