Feasibility of an Unfunded Multicenter Trial Group for Older Adult Burn Patients: A Retrospective Study

Abstract Older adults make up a growing population of burn patients but pose unique physiological challenges that require specialized care. Comprehensive multicenter data are limited, and single-center studies lack the power to answer key questions for this group. This study assessed the feasibility of forming an unfunded multicenter trial group to study older burn patients and piloted a retrospective study to explore trends in their care and their clinical outcomes. After Institutional Review Board approval and executing data use agreements, twelve North American burn centers collected standardized data on patients aged 60 and older treated from 2017–2019. Demographics, burn characteristics, interventions, and outcomes were gathered from each site’s Burn Care Quality Platform (BCQP) submissions or Electronic Medical Record (EMR) and entered in a centralized REDCap database. Among the 1,632 patients included in the database, median age was 68 years; most were male (67%) and White (73%) with a median BMI of 27.5. Median burn size was 3.5% total surface area, and patients arrived a median of 4.7 hours post-injury. The median modified Baux score was 76.2. Patients typically underwent one operation within three days of arrival, leading to a median hospital stay of 6 days and ICU stay of 1 day. In-hospital mortality was 10.4%, and median time to wound healing was 40 days. This pilot demonstrates that an unfunded multicenter collaboration is feasible and can generate meaningful data to guide care for older burn patients. Strong inter-institutional collaboration and communication and standardized data definitions were key to success.