OBJECTIVE To study the efficacy of growth hormone given to severely burned children from discharge to 12 months after burn and for 12 months after the drug was discontinued. SUMMARY BACKGROUND DATA We have previously shown that low-dose recombinant human growth hormone (rhGH), given to children after a severe thermal injury, successfully improved lean muscle mass, bone mineral content, and gr...

INTRODUCTION Inhalation injury in combination with a severe thermal injury increases mortality. Alterations in inflammatory mediators, such as cytokines, contribute to the incidence of multi-organ failure and mortality. The aim of the present study was to determine the effect of inhalation injury on cytokine expression in severely burned children. METHODS Thirty severely burned pediatric pati...

1. Studies addressing the immediate impacts of fire on forest arthropod communities and their implications for conservation are few, particularly for species within dead wood. To investigate the effects of fire on saproxylic beetles (Coleoptera), we randomly assigned large-diameter loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) logs to a forest scheduled for a prescribed burn (i.e. a low-intensity surface fire...

The predominant technique for tracking wildfires uses repeat satellite observations to look for and measure the size of burn scars, the charred remains of once-lush terrain. Because it relies on moderateresolution imagery, this approach has a tendency to miss the smaller fires that, though less widely devastating, can still account for a sizeable portion of the total burned area. Small fires ca...

The Pseudomonas aeruginosa quorum-sensing systems, las and rhl, control the production of numerous virulence factors. In this study, we have used the burned-mouse model to examine the contribution of quorum-sensing systems to the pathogenesis of P. aeruginosa infections in burn wounds. Different quorum-sensing mutants of P. aeruginosa PAO1 that were defective in the lasR, lasI, or rhlI gene or ...

Land surface albedo, a key parameter to derive Earth’s surface energy balance, is used in the parameterization of numerical weather prediction, climate monitoring and climate change impact assessments. Changes in albedo due to fire have not been fully investigated on a continental and global scale. The main goal of this study, therefore, is to quantify the changes in instantaneous shortwave alb...

BACKGROUND Acute kidney injury in severely burned patients is associated with high mortality. We wondered whether early use of continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) changes outcomes in severely burned military casualties with predetermined criteria for acute kidney injury. METHODS Between November 2005 and June 2007, casualties admitted to our burn intensive care unit after sustaining b...

Children, especially younger ones, form a risky group among burned patients. A severe burn injury is not only a life threatening problem for injured children, but may have serious physical, psychosocial and financial effects on them, their families and the society. Although the number of burned victims among children has been decreasing in most of the European countries, including Croatia, duri...

An algorithm for burned area mapping in Africa based on classification trees was developed using SPOT-VEGETATION imagery. The derived 1 km spatial resolution maps were compared with 30 m resolution maps obtained with 13 Landsat scenes, through linear regression analysis. The procedure quantifies the bias in burned area estimation present in the low resolution burned area maps. Good corresponden...