Cooling the burn

Home

Pages

General information

First aid

Add annotation to this page

Authoring team

Cooling an area of the skin that has been burnt is important because it:

stabilizes mast cells to limit the production of inflammatory mediators e.g. histamine

reduces the progression of a burn in the 'zone of stasis'

Cooling should be undertaken with flowing water:

below 7 degrees centigrade, vasospasm is likely which will actually promote the ischaemic progression of the burn

in young children with a relatively large surface area to volume ratio, the skin away from the burn should be kept warm to reduce the tendency to hypothermia

for flowing water, ideally at least 20 minutes

for alkaline burns, longer periods should be considered as there is a tendency for liquefaction and greater penetration of the agent

wet towels suboptimal as they quickly heat up; if used, they should be replaced regularly

Annotations let you add information to this page that would be handy to have on hand during a consultation, such as a web address or phone number. Reflective notes let you add information to the CPD dashboard based on the content of this page: what did you learn from it and how might it change your practice?

Annotations let you add information to this page that would be handy to have on hand during a consultation, such as a web address or phone number. This information will always be displayed when you visit this page

Cooling the burn

Create an account to add page annotations