Question

Based on your understanding of barrier defenses, explain why large coverage burns are often so fatal.

Answer 1

Any burn that exceeds 30% of a person's body can be fatal, it requires special care from a specalized burn center to manage these problems. Barrier defense, part of the innate immune system is part of body's most basic defense mechanism, barrier systems are continously working to protect against wide range of bacterias and viruses, these defense systems are associated with external surface of the body, the skin, this organ acts as primary barrier to the entrance of various pathogens, and the skin is covered with a layer of keratinized eoithelium that is too dry for bacterias to grow and moreover sweat and other skin secretions may lower the pH which can be hostile for the survival of these bacterias.

Large coverage burns can cause serious body wide problems, these burns can damage the skins protective barrier, bacause of which bacteria's can enter the body and infections can happen not only on the injured areas but also on organs such as lungs, blood vessels,etc, if large areas of blood vessels are affected it can lead to hypovolemic shock, sepsis, which can be very fatal. With large scale burns, our body's inflamatory response ( under normal conditions, these responses protects the body from invaders) can overreact making the injury more severe and harming the bodys internal organs like heart, lungs, bloodvessels and other organ systems which all can be very fatal.