The Birmingham Burns Centre has been regularly presenting its mortality est
imates since its pioneering work in 1949 on the use of probit analysis. The
last of these estimates that showed a significant improvement in survival
was presented in 1971. This improvement was attributed to the introduction
of topical 0.5% silver nitrate against Pseudomonas aeruginosa. In the last
20 years, several changes in management of burns have taken place following
a better knowledge of its pathophysiology. This study shows our experience
from the last 20 years by comparing mortality estimates between two succes
sive 10-year periods i.e., 1979-1988 and 1989-1998. We used probit analysis
for deriving lethal area 50 (LA 50) for various age groups. The comparison
showed that the mortality curves between the two periods were identical su
ggesting no improvement in the chances of survival. Since the mortalities w
ere so similar the data were combined. The LA 50s derived from this combine
d data when compared with our earlier series from 1965 to 1970 also did not
show a significant change in mortality. We conclude that in our experience
the chances of dying for a given severity of injury have not changed signi
ficantly for more than 20 years. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd and ISBI. Al
l rights reserved.