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Symptoms And Treatment Of Severe Burns

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Severe burns are among of the most painful and traumatic injuries treated by modern day medicine (6). This is due to both extensive physiological damage of the injuries and psychological damage which accompany them (4). Pharmacological solutions provide the foundation of pain-control strategies for patients with burn injuries. Pain medications usually work well for controlling resting pain. However, patients typically have their bandages changed and their wounds cleaned, disinfected, and monitored on a daily basis. Wound-care sessions often include debridement of necrotic skin. Despite aggressive use of pain medication most patients being treated for severe burns report severe to excruciating pain during wound care (4). The ability to mitigate this pain can be vital in patient’s recovery both physiologically and psychologically (anxiety).
General anaesthesia is often too dangerous and costly to be used on a daily basis for pain control. Instead opioid drugs such as morphine are used. Such drugs are reasonable safe and seldom addictive in a hospital setting. Nevertheless opioid drugs rarely control all of the burn pain in a given patient and many patients have poor responses to them, including no analgesia, nausea, constipation (Patterson). Because of these disadvantages it is important to control using a multifaceted approach. Virtual reality technology (VRT) and hypnosis are two compelling non-pharmacological approaches for reducing procedural burn treatment pain. This

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