Description and classification of childhood burns.

The shortcomings of the ICD codes for describing burn injuries and the circumstances of these injuries (E Code) are highlighted. The usefulness of an approach which seeks to identify precisely the agent of injury (i. e. the form of energy) and its vehicle or vector is examined. It is shown that despite its theoretical attractiveness, it also has some shortcomings. These are, in part, due to anomalies in the definition of a burn, a consequence of which may be that some burn surveys produced a distorted impression of the distribution of the various types of burn injury. The need to develop and evaluate methods for describing the sequence of events resulting in burn injury is emphasized.