Research Shows That Burn Injuries Are More Like a Chronic Disease

Burn injuries can occur in many different ways, including cooking accidents, workplace incidents, or motor vehicle crashes. Regardless of how they happen, burn injuries are painful and can lead to long-lasting medical and physical consequences, such as permanent scarring, ongoing discomfort, and an increased risk of additional health complications. For many people, burn injuries don’t just go away when the wounds heal.

Understanding how burn injuries can create long-term complications, and speaking with a burn injury lawyer, may help you pursue damages for the burn injury you sustained.

What does the research say about burn injuries?

Several published papers within the last ten years come to the same basic conclusions: burn injuries often create a multitude of health issues, and they can act like a chronic disease.

NLM’s 2019 paper, “Understanding acute burn injury as a chronic disease,” concluded that burn injuries can:

• Be linked to increased mortality, although this does depend on severity.
• Be associated with a higher long-term risk of certain diseases, including some cancers, though findings vary by severity and patient factors.
• Result in long-term changes in immune function.
• Be considered a chronic disease due to the sustained changes to immune function that burn injuries create.

Just one year later, in 2020, the NLM published “Burn injury.” In this study, the authors come to the following conclusions:

• Many patients cannot be considered fully recovered from a burn injury, even after the skin has healed, due to lasting physical or psychological effects.
• Burn injuries often come with long-term physical and mental effects.
• Patients who sustain burn injuries often deal with long-term alterations that affect most facets of their lives.

Additionally, the American Burn Association published an article on January 21, 2025, which stated that over 398,000 individuals seek medical care for burns every year, and burn injuries are a significant cause of accidental death and injury in the United States. The World Health Organization’s 2023 burn injury fact sheet added that burn injuries are the cause of an estimated 180,000 deaths every year, most of which occur in low and middle-income countries.

How are burn injuries like a chronic disease?

Burn injuries are like a chronic disease because they can cause:

• Pain and inflammation that can last for a long time and, depending on the extent of the burns as well as their effect on your body, may never truly go away, regardless of the treatments you undergo.
• Nerve damage and nerve dysfunction; this can lead to chronic pain and an itchy sensation that rarely goes away, as well as a reduced sensitivity to things like touch, heat or cold.
• Musculoskeletal issues, such as muscle atrophy and loss of bone density, can lead to weakness, fatigue, difficulty with movement, and persistent discomfort.

Beyond these complications, research indicates that severe burn injuries may also contribute to a range of long-term health effects, such as:

• Altering metabolic function and potentially increasing long-term risks such as insulin resistance. Diabetes itself comes with a set of issues that can be difficult to deal with, especially after a burn injury.
• Increasing the risk of various diseases, such as cancer, gastrointestinal diseases, and cardiovascular disease.
• Causing long-term psychological effects that negatively affect quality of life, including mental distress, anxiety, and depression.

Burn injury treatment can require the injured parties to:

• Obtain long-term care to treat the burn injury itself; if necessary, long-term care can be expensive, invasive, and time-consuming, which can make it difficult for you to live the life you are accustomed to.
• Seek medical care for the issues created by this burn injury, such as long-term pain and nerve damage; the care these issues require is also quite expensive and time-consuming.

A few more statistics underlie these facts as follows:

• In long-term follow-up studies, more than 50% of severe burn injury survivors report ongoing pain 12 years after injury.
• In one study, 10% of severe burn patients suffered from depression, another 10% suffered from anxiety, and 7% lived with PTSD.
• When it comes to infectious diseases, people with burns were shown to have a mortality rate 75 times higher than those without burn injuries.

What can a lawyer do to help you?

A lawyer can help you:

• Figure out which parties are liable for your injury.
• Calculate the damages you may be entitled to, based on the facts of your burn injury.
• File a lawsuit against the parties liable for your injury.
• Negotiate with the liable parties and help you pursue compensation based on the facts of your case.
• Take your case to trial if negotiations do not lead to the outcome you need.

If you want to work with a lawyer to pursue damages for a burn injury, you should work with a lawyer who has extensive experience helping clients obtain settlements and verdicts in injury cases.

Contact Gainsberg Injury and Accident Lawyers

Burn injuries are serious, and the worst burn injuries tend to stick around. If you sustained a burn injury due to someone else’s negligence, you may want to pursue legal action.

Contact us to speak with an attorney at Gainsberg Injury and Accident Lawyers today. We are ready to evaluate your case and go over your next steps.