Australasian Burns Critical Care Observational Study (ABCCO)

Project team

A/Prof Anthony Holley
Mr Brett Droder
Prof Jeffrey Lipman
Michael Reade
Jeremy Cohen

Each year in Australia, approximately 1% of the population sustains a thermal injury. The great majority of these burns are minor; however, patients with severe burns experience considerable morbidity and mortality. Three hundred major burns patients were admitted to Australian and New Zealand intensive care units from July 2023 to July 2024, comprising 0.17% of all adult intensive care unit admissions. Despite improved surgical and critical care management, burn patients remain a challenging cohort to manage and are associated with significant patient morbidity, financial and critical care resource burden, which is proportional to the involved body surface area. There are currently several agencies that collect data on burns patients, however, there is a paucity of high-quality data  to guide clinical practice, and address the significant variation in the critical care management of the severely burned patient.

A dedicated registry may be beneficial in informing burns critical care. Therefore, to evaluate practice variability, and current Australian burn management, a pilot burns critical care registry was developed, collecting data from six burns ICU sites around Australia for a 12 month time period.