Burns represent a significant proportion of the total serious trauma workload in England and Wales

Traumatic injury is the leading cause of death in the first four decades of life. However, current estimates for traumatic injury rates fail to take into account burns. The aim of this work was to estimate the contribution of burns to serious traumatic injury in England and Wales. We have determined population-based burns rates using the International Burn Injury Database (iBID, www.ibidb.org) which collects data from regional burn centres, and non-burns rate using data from the Trauma Audit and Research Network (TARN) which collects data from emergency departments (ED, www.TARN.ac.uk). Due to incomplete national coverage of TARN, non-burns rates were estimated using data from 94 EDs that contributed data to TARN. Both non-burn and burns rates were calculated nationally and for each regional burn service catchment area (n = 17). Only serious injuries (≥72 h admission or death) were included. Burns rate was 4.7 and non-burns rate 82.7 per 100,000 per year nationally. Burns therefore contributed 5.4% of all serious traumatic injuries. Contribution of burns in different regional burn service catchment areas was between 1.5% and 12%. This data suggests that burns contribute significantly to the overall trauma workload, and should be carefully considered in healthcare planning and policy.