A burn injury can be due to electricity, chemical, lightning, and fire, resulting in serious burns to the victim or their loved ones].
Superficial burns, superficial partial burns, and third-degree burns are the three most common types of burn injuries, and these major burn injuries determine the burn injury recovery process.
Let’s explore the healing process of getting healthy skin when a victim receives severe burns.
How Does Burn Injury Heal?
Just as cuts take a few days to heal, minor burn injuries also require a few days to get healed skin back. However, severe types of burn injuries can result in burned skin requiring skin grafts, extensive and expensive surgery, and prolonged medical burn care.
What to Expect During the Burn Recovery Process?
Scars
First-degree burns leave burn patients with scars that may take a few days to heal back to normal. However, second-degree burns and third-degree burns require a few months. Severe burns in the joints or near that area may restrict movement in those areas and need physical therapy to regain some movement.
Burn Wounds Start to Close
When there are severe burns and the skin has lost its healing properties, the wound may take some time to heal, but during this process, the human body closes the wound by pulling on the skin nearby. Victims can start to notice the shrinkage of the wound as time goes on. However, that area might have movement restrictions, requiring rehabilitation therapy.
Regrowth of Nerves
Depending on the type of burn, the nerves in the area can get destroyed, resulting in no sensation or feeling. Nerves do grow back, but this is a slow process, and it’ll take some time before they do. However, you may not be able to recover sensations in those areas.
Itching and Abnormal Sweating
Due to the burn injury, sweat glands and blood vessels face damage and are further affected by the scar tissues. This results in inoperable sweat glands resulting in dryness, but as the burn injuries start to heal, there is excessive itching and abnormal sweating.
Skin Condition
The skin turns red and inflamed with swelling and blisters upon getting burned. However, skin can heal itself, and it takes around 12 to 18 months, depending on the severity of the injury and the success of the skin graft surgery, for the skin to fade back to its normal color.
Eat Well to Heal Burn Injuries
Not many people pay attention to this, but having a well-balanced diet is the fastest road to recovery from burn injuries. Your body requires substantial amounts of protein and more calories during the healing process, and the victim must talk to a nutritionist about it. Keeping their eating habits in mind, a nutritionist is more than capable of creating a well-rounded diet plan to ensure a speedy recovery.
Rehabilitation for Severe Burns
Therapy and rehabilitation are also a huge part of the recovery process. Many believe that physical wounds impact an individual, but they need to have the right state of mind for a human to recover.
Psychological effects of a burn include anxiety, stress, and depression. Going to rehab or being part of a social group or burn team can help improve the victim’s mental health and ensure a fast recovery.
If you’ve gotten burned and it wasn’t your fault, Contact Ehline Law and our burn injury lawyers at (213) 596-9642 and get a free case review on your burn injuries.
Citations:
https://www.healthpartners.com/care/hospitals/regions/specialties/burn-center/healing/
https://msktc.org/burn/factsheets/Understanding_Burn_Injury