Burn Wound Care: Treatment and Industry Outlook

Burn wound care is a complex and evolving field that requires a multidisciplinary approach to master. The space can encompass a wide range of specialties, including surgery, internal medicine, infectious disease, and rehabilitation medicine.

A 2023 market analysis report on burn care valued the market size at $2.61 billion and projected it to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.18% from 2024 to 2030. Driving this growth is a rise in burn incidence, high demand for skin grafts, and an increasing awareness of available treatment options.

The report indicates  a “noticeable rise in the demand for burn care products for at-home use” primarily due to individuals desiring to minimize visits to clinics, hospitals, and similar facilities. On top of all this,  many patients are turning to virtual consultations to address their medical needs.

The world of burn wound care is clearly evolving. We built this guide to arm wound care practitioners like you with insights that will help navigate this evolution. Keep reading to learn more about burn treatment and the state of the industry.

Burn Wound Care: Symptoms and Treatment

Burn Symptoms

Burn symptoms vary depending on the severity or degree of the burn. Symptoms are often worse during the first few hours or days after the burn. Here’s a breakdown of the different types of burns and their associated symptoms.

First-degree burns:

• Appearance of skin is typically red and swollen.  
• Symptoms include mild pain, redness, and swelling.  
• Healing time is typically less than a week and wounds often leave no scars.

Second-degree burns:

• Appearance of skin is typically red and blistered and may be wet or dry.
• Symptoms include moderate to severe pain, swelling, and blistering.  
• Healing time can typically take several weeks and wounds may leave scarring.  

Third-degree burns:

• Appearance of skin is white, leathery, or charred.  
• Symptoms include little to no pain due to nerve damage, severe swelling, and potential for shock.  
• Healing time can take months and often requires skin grafts, and wounds usually leave significant scarring.

Fourth-degree burns:

• Appearance of skin shows  deep tissue damage, including to muscle and bone .  
• Symptoms include severe pain, significant tissue damage, and potential for life-threatening complications.
• Healing time is typically lengthy as wounds require extensive medical intervention and may result in permanent disability.  

Additional symptoms of severe burns include:

• Shock that presents as rapid pulse, low blood pressure, and confusion.
• Infection that includes fever, increased pain, pus, and redness around the wound.
• Difficulty breathing if the burn affects the airways.

Treatment at Healthcare Facilities

The treatment of burn injuries necessitates a multidisciplinary approach, engaging a variety of healthcare professionals at different stages of care.

Pre-hospital care: EMTs are the first line of defense for all injuries, but especially burns. They provide immediate stabilization, pain management, and prevention of further injury at the scene of the injury. Their swift actions can significantly impact the patient’s eventual outcome.

Acute care: Upon arrival at the hospital, emergency physicians play a pivotal role in assessing the burn’s severity, initiating fluid resuscitation to counteract shock, and administering pain medication. For severe burns, patients are often transferred to specialized burn centers.

Burn center care: Burn centers house a team of specialists dedicated to providing comprehensive care for burn injuries. This is often where the majority of care will take place. This team typically includes:

• Burn surgeons. These surgeons perform essential procedures like debridement to remove necrotic tissue and skin grafting to cover exposed areas, promoting healing and minimizing scarring.  
• Plastic surgeons. Collaborating with burn surgeons, plastic surgeons focus on reconstructive procedures to restore function and improve the aesthetic appearance of the affected areas.  
• Wound care nurses. These nurses are highly skilled in managing burn wounds, performing meticulous dressing changes and monitoring for infection.  
• Physical and occupational therapists. These therapists work with patients to regain mobility, strength, and independence in daily activities, addressing both physical and psychological challenges.
• Dietitians. Providing tailored nutritional plans, dietitians ensure patients receive adequate calories and protein to support the healing process and prevent malnutrition.  
• Psychologists and social workers. These professionals offer emotional support, counseling, and coping strategies to help patients navigate the psychological impact of burn injuries, including anxiety, depression, and body image concerns.

Burn Care At Home

In some cases, especially as the report above noted, individuals may choose to take on burn care at home. Though they may ultimately visit your healthcare facility, it’s useful to know how they may have initially treated their wounds, so you know how to formulate the best approach to professional medical treatment. And remember, while this is the common advice for at-home burn care, they may not have done all of these steps. Make sure you’re getting the complete story before treatment.

Patients will likely have followed these steps for burn care at home:

• Cool the burn. Typical advice calls for immediately running cool (not cold) water over the burn for 10-15 minutes to help reduce pain and swelling. Applying ice or ice water directly to the burn can damage the skin further, so keep an eye out for that.
• Clean the burn. Once the burn is cooled, it’s recommended to gently wash it with mild soap and cool water and pat the area dry with a clean, soft cloth. Rubbing should be avoided, as it can irritate the skin, but as this is not necessarily common sense, this step may have been skipped or performed incorrectly.
• Apply antibiotic ointment. Next should come a thin layer of antibiotic ointment, such as Neosporin or Bacitracin, to the burn. Then the burn should be covered with a loose, sterile bandage to protect it from dirt and germs. As many people have heard that you should “let wounds breathe”, it’s possible this step was not followed either.
• Monitor for infection. Look for signs of infection, such as increased redness, swelling, pus, or fever. If there is any sign of infection, patients should see a doctor immediately—but as we know, that is not always the case. Be aware that patients may come in with infected burns, some even seriously so.
• Use over-the-counter pain relief. Patients can take over-the-counter pain relievers like ibuprofen or acetaminophen to help manage pain, if needed. While this is unlikely to have a major effect on the way you treat the burn, it’s always important to know what medication the patient has taken.

Hopefully, they will also have abided by these tips.

• Avoid popping blisters. If blisters form, they should be left intact to help protect the skin from infection.
• Protect the burn from the sun. Once the burn has healed, it needs to be protected from the sun by wearing sunscreen and/or protective clothing.
• Elevate the burned area. If possible, elevating the burned area above the heart can help reduce swelling.

Patients may seek medical attention if they have:

• Large burns more  than three inches in diameter.
• Deep burns involving blistering, charring, or numbness.
• Burns on the face, hands, feet, genitals, or major joints.
• Burns caused by chemicals, electricity, or radiation.
• Burns that cause severe pain or swelling.
• Burns that show signs of infection.

These will be the burns you’re most likely to see in your practice.

Burn Wound Care: 8 Challenges in the Industry

1. Infection Risk

Burn wounds are highly susceptible to infection due to the loss of the skin barrier. Infections can delay healing, lead to sepsis, and increase mortality rates. Effective infection control measures, including meticulous wound care, appropriate antibiotic therapy, and early identification of infection signs, are crucial.

2. Pain Management

Burns can be extremely painful, requiring effective pain management strategies. Chronic pain can persist long after the initial injury, significantly impacting patients’ quality of life. A multi-modal approach to pain management, combining pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions, is essential to optimize pain control.

3. Scarring

Scarring is a common complication of burn injuries, leading to functional limitations, aesthetic concerns, and psychological distress. Minimizing scarring requires aggressive wound care, including early wound closure, pressure therapy, and silicone gel sheeting. In severe cases, surgical interventions like skin grafting and scar revision may be necessary.

4. Psychological Impact

Burn injuries can have a profound psychological impact on patients, leading to anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Providing comprehensive psychological support, including counseling and therapy, is essential to help patients cope with the emotional challenges associated with burn injuries.

5. High Cost of Treatment

Advanced burn care treatments, including specialized facilities, surgical procedures, and long-term rehabilitation, can be extremely costly. This can lead to financial hardship for patients and their families, particularly in low-income countries.

6. Limited Treatment Options

While significant advancements have been made in burn wound care, there remains a need for more effective treatments, especially for severe burns. Developing innovative therapies, such as tissue engineering and stem cell therapy, holds promise but requires further research and development.

7. Long-Term Care

Burn injuries often require long-term care, including rehabilitation, psychological support, and ongoing wound management. Ensuring access to these services can be challenging, especially in resource-limited settings.

8. Strict Regulatory Standards

The development and approval of new burn wound care products and therapies, especially those involving advanced technologies like biologics and regenerative medicine, are subject to stringent regulatory requirements. This can lead to lengthy and costly clinical trials, hindering innovation and market entry.

Burn Wound Care: 5 Interesting Trends In the Industry

1. Advanced Wound Dressings and Biomaterials

• Innovative materials: The development of advanced wound dressings incorporating innovative materials like hydrogels, hydrocolloids, and foams has been an important shift in the industry. These dressings offer superior moisture management, antimicrobial properties, and pain relief.
• Bioengineered skin substitutes: The use of bioengineered skin substitutes, such as cultured epithelial autografts (CEAs) and dermal substitutes, helps to accelerate wound closure, reduce scarring, and improve functional outcomes.

2. Regenerative Medicine and Tissue Engineering

• Growth factor therapy: Growth factors stimulate cell proliferation and differentiation, leading to faster wound healing and reduced scarring.
• Tissue engineering: The engineering of artificial tissues and organs to replace damaged tissue, particularly in cases of extensive burns, is a promising development.
• Stem cell therapy: The application of stem cell therapy has been applied to promote tissue regeneration and improve wound healing. Stem cells can be harvested from various sources, including bone marrow, adipose tissue, and umbilical cord blood.

Stem Cells In Wound Healing: A Real World Application

“Stem cell therapy has emerged as a promising strategy for enhancing wound healing, utilizing cells from diverse sources such as endothelial progenitor cells, bone marrow, adipose tissue, dermal, and inducible pluripotent stem cells,” state the authors of The Efficacy of Stem Cells in Wound Healing: A Systematic Review.

In this review, the authors comprehensively investigate stem cell therapies in chronic wounds, summarizing the clinical, translational, and primary literature.

In their research, they discovered that a staggering 70% of amputations stem from unhealed wounds and an estimated six million Americans suffer the consequences of nonhealing wounds, amounting to $25 billion worth of healthcare expenditures.

Stem cell therapy holds the potential to mitigate both the “human suffering and economic burden imposed by chronic wounds,” as this therapy is a promising and “potentially transformative approach.”

The researchers discuss numerous study results across a number of stem cell types, including:

• Skin-derived stem cells
• Endothelial progenitor stem cells
• Bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BM-MSCs)
• Adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells (AD-MSCs)
• Human embryo fibroblast-, Wharton’s jelly-, umbilical cord-, and human placenta-derived stem cells
• Inducible pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs)

One interesting study involved 40 participants having grade II and grade III ulcers. It showed that the treatment group—which received allogenic keratinocytes on polyethylene and silica microcarriers every three days—had a remarkable 92% reduction in wound area after 30 days, compared to 32% in the control group. The treatment group also required fewer dressings for complete healing compared to the control group.

3. Telehealth and Remote Monitoring

• Remote patient monitoring: The use of telehealth technologies to remotely monitor burn wounds, allowing for early intervention and improved patient outcomes, is making its mark on the industry. This can be particularly beneficial for patients in rural areas or those with limited mobility.
• Virtual consultations: Virtual consultations can help facilitate communication between healthcare providers and patients, reducing the need for in-person visits and improving access to care, especially in cases where infection may be a concern.

4. Personalized Medicine

• Genomic medicine: Genomic information helps to identify individual patient factors that may influence wound healing and treatment response. This can help tailor treatment plans to optimize outcomes.
• Precision medicine: Precision medicine approaches the development of individualized plans to identify the most effective treatments for each patient based on their specific characteristics.

5. Pain Management and Psychological Support

• Advanced pain management techniques: The development of advanced pain management techniques, including regional anesthesia, pharmacological interventions, and non-pharmacological approaches, has been very helpful to improve patient comfort and quality of life.
• Psychological interventions: The integration of psychological interventions, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy and mindfulness-based stress reduction helps to address the emotional and psychological impact of burn injuries and improve coping mechanisms.

Navigate Burn Wound Care with an Informed Perspective

Burn wound care may be complex, but staying up to date on current challenges and trends in the industry can ensure you maintain an informed perspective when treating patients. This can go a long way in helping patients heal quicker and experience less pain.