Health status in Swedish burn patients. Assessment utilising three variants of the Burn Specific Health Scale

Perceived health in a consecutive group of major burn patients treated at the Uppsala University Hospital Burn Unit from 1980 to 1995 is reported. The three published variants of the Burn Specific Health Scale (BSHS), i.e. BSHS-Abbreviated (BSHS-A); BSHS-Revised (BSHS-R); BSHS-Brief (BSHS-B) were used in concert for this purpose in order to allow for a comparison of the instruments. Two hundred and forty-eight of 350 former patients (response rate 70.9%; mean total body surface area (TBSA) 23.1% (S.D.=16.2%)) responded to 94 items from previous versions of the BSHS at a mean of 9.3 (S.D.=4.8) years after injury. All three versions of the BSHS gave similar results with respect to global outcome on a group level. Correlations among the three different instruments were high, but were strongest between BSHS-B and BSHS-R (r=0.99). The largest impact on health was seen for Role Activities in BSHS-A, and Heat Sensitivity and Work in both BSHS-R and BSHS-B. There were significant relationships between sociodemographic variables (e.g. work, partnership and living) and self-reported outcome. Men reported better overall outcome than women did. The presence of a full thickness burn was associated with worse outcome with respect to several domains. The apparent variability in outcome pattern between different domains underscores the importance of utilising a broad instrument with adequate content validity.