How Severe Burn Injuries Affect Your Organs

Severe burn injuries can cause chronic pain, numbness, scarring, and disfigurement. However, they can also cause further internal complications affecting the organs. Depending on the severity of a person’s organ damage due to burns, the organs may begin to fail, which can quickly lead to an organ transplant or death.

What is considered a severe burn injury?

Burn injuries are usually categorized by the degree of the burns; first-degree, second-degree, and third-degree. A third-degree burn is the most severe. These burns damage the skin and underlying tissue, muscles, and ligaments due to high temperatures.

Third-degree burns result in damage to the top (epidermis), middle (dermis), and third layer of skin (hypodermis). Depending on the severity and extent of a third-degree burn, your bones, nerves, hair follicles, and sweat glands could also be affected. Many people do not realize how serious their third-degree burn injuries are because the nerves may be completely destroyed, meaning that they do not feel pain immediately after the accident.

However, they may begin to notice that their skin is extremely dry, black, red, swollen, and leathery. If an accident victim does not seek medical attention after experiencing a severe burn, their burns may never fully heal on their own, resulting in long-term complications or death.

What are the different types of burns that Oklahoma City accident victims may suffer?

Severe burn injuries can result from various types of personal injury accidents, such as car accidents, truck accidents, motorcycle accidents, construction accidents, workplace accidents, and more. Here are five different types of burns that Oklahoma City accident victims may experience:

1. Thermal burns: Thermal burns are the most common type of burn injury. These burns result from a fire, flame, steam, hot liquid, or hot items. For example, if you touch a hot stove, you are likely to experience a thermal burn.
2. Electrical burns: Electrical burns usually occur when a person is working with or around power lines, or with equipment that uses electricity. For example, an electrician installing wiring in a building may experience electrical burns.
3. Light burns: A person may experience light burns from too much sunlight or from being exposed to ultraviolet rays for too long. For example, a tanning bed can give someone a severe light burn.
4. Chemical burns: Chemical burns usually form when a person is working with or exposed to dangerous chemicals, such as acids, alkalis, caustics, bleach, gasoline, disinfectants, and more.
5. Radiation burns: Radiation burns typically occur from radiation therapy, which is usually produced by a machine to treat cancer.

How do severe burn injuries affect your organs?

Severe burn injuries can affect different organs in different ways. Below, we go over a few of the organs impacted by burn injuries.

• Kidneys: Your kidneys filter the blood and remove any toxic waste from the body. However, when you have a thermal or electrical burn, your blood volume may become low, which can negatively affect the kidneys. Those who have been involved in a burn accident may experience massive blood loss, which can put a strain on the kidneys. As a result, the kidneys cannot do their job and may even go into shock. When the kidneys are unable to function and filter the blood properly, you may experience renal failure and need to spend the rest of your life on dialysis to prevent infections and death.
• Lungs: The lungs usually become affected due to breathing in smoke or toxic chemicals. Therefore, if you have a thermal or chemical burn injury, there is a strong possibility that your lungs may be impacted by the burns. It can take a few days for you to notice how seriously your lungs have been affected. A burn injury victim can experience decreased oxygenation, which can eventually lead to lung or respiratory failure. Some doctors may decide to place the burn injury victim on a ventilator to increase oxygenation, but it can be difficult to wean the individual off a ventilator and encourage their lungs to breathe on their own again. This can also place them at high risk of developing pneumonia or dying.
• Heart: When a person has severe burn injuries, the heart may start to show signs of low cardiac function. The body will most likely increase the heart rate to make up for the loss of cardiac function. As a result, the heart rate and blood output may be much higher than healthy individuals. Unfortunately, this can put a lot of stress on your heart and eventually cause serious damage. If the doctor cannot improve or control your cardiac function, you may experience lifelong heart problems, heart failure, and even death.
• Liver: Depending on the severity and extent of your burn injuries, the liver may become swollen within the first week or two and take over a year to return to normal size again. In addition, your liver enzymes, such as aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alanine aminotransferase (ALT), can increase and take several months to return to normal. These effects can result in serious liver damage as well as liver failure.

How is the severity of a burn determined?

While most doctors will consider any third-degree burn severe, there are several other factors they may look for, which include:

• What areas or regions of the body are burned: The areas or regions of the body that experience burns are taken into consideration because some areas of the body are more sensitive than others. For example, the face or eyes are very sensitive regions of the body, which can cause extreme concern if burned.
• How much of the area is burned: Most doctors will want to determine how much of the area is burned. They will use a special system that divides your body into regions and determines what percentage of your body’s total surface has burns. This plays a big factor in determining the severity of your burns.
• What caused the burn: It is also important for the doctor to know what caused the burn. Some burns can have long-lasting effects and continue to affect the skin long after the initial burn. For example, a thermal burn is typically no longer burning the skin once you move away from the flame, but chemicals can stay on the skin for a long time and continue to burn.
• Other pre-existing conditions: If you have pre-existing conditions, such as a heart condition, respiratory problems, diabetes, or kidney issues, you are at a higher risk of complications after a burn.
• Your age: Your age is always taken into account, because young children and elderly individuals usually experience more severe complications after suffering burns.

If you or a family member have a severe burn injury that caused organ damage or other life-threatening consequences, the Oklahoma City burn injury attorneys at Cunningham & Mears are ready and available to assist you. We understand the difficulties that burn accident victims face and are prepared to stand up and fight for the compensation you deserve. Please call our office or submit our contact form to schedule a case evaluation at no cost to you today.