Beyond the Feast: Holiday Safety Tips from a Burn Surgeon

Alan Pang, M.D., a Texas Tech Physicians surgeon burn specializing in wound, trauma and critical care, discusses common burn injuries during the holiday season, emphasizing prevention and treatment. He highlights scald burns from cooking and hot beverage spills and fire risks from Christmas trees. 

Safety tips include keeping children away from cooking areas, using covered cups for hot drinks, and ensuring electrical safety. For burn treatment, he advises running burns under cold water to remove heat, avoiding home remedies like butter, and seeking medical help for severe burns, pain, or large burns. He also warns about frostbite risks in cold weather and the importance of keeping extremities warm.

Transcript

Melissa Whitfield  0:09 
Hello and welcome back to Texas Tech Health Check from Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. I'm your host, Melissa Whitfield. We want you to get healthy and stay healthy with help from evidence based advice from our physicians, health care providers and researchers. As we wind down the year, please do your best to have a safe holiday season. Many people end up in the emergency room for burns which could be prevented. What steps can you take to prevent burns, and how can you treat minor burns without going to the emergency room? Dr Alan Pang, Texas Tech Physicians surgeon who specializes in burn, wound, trauma and critical care, gives us great advice on how we can try to prevent burns by being more aware and careful around items or situations which we might overlook and cause us harm. Dr Pang, also shares with us how we can treat minor burns at home and what not to do when treating a burn.

Melissa Whitfield  1:06 
Dr Pang, welcome back to our podcast.

Dr. Alan Pang  1:11 
Thank you for having me again.

Melissa Whitfield  1:13 
Can you remind us and our listeners a little bit about yourself and your expertise and what you do here at the Health Sciences Center?

Dr. Alan Pang  1:19 
Of course, I'm a faculty member here at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. I mainly do burn surgery and wounds, and that's what I do on a day to day basis.

Melissa Whitfield  1:28 
Well, thank you again for coming back, and especially so quickly.

Dr. Alan Pang  1:31 
Of course.

Melissa Whitfield  1:31 
So you're going to talk to us about another holiday theme podcast, and this is around burns. What are the most common types of burns that occur around this Thanksgiving through New Year's holiday season.

Dr. Alan Pang  1:44 
Yeah. I mean, you know, we're out celebrating with our families, and usually we're having these big family gatherings where we're having a lot of food. Well, when we prepare that food, you know, you know, perhaps our kitchen isn't set up to serve 15 people, and we get put in a bind. And sometimes these foods, either while we're cooking, can cause a scald burn to either yourself or your children, or perhaps how we store the food can cause some scalding because food, perhaps may be where it isn't usually. We see a lot of injuries from children falling into the food, if it's being stored on the ground, or something like that.

Melissa Whitfield  2:20 
What are some activities that we might not think of that might cause burns, other than leaving food on the floor?

Dr. Alan Pang  2:26 
Of course, for Christmas, specifically, we're putting up trees, whether you're a fake tree person or a real tree person, there's fire risks. A lot of electrical things can happen. And if something short circuits, whether it's you know, faulty electrical wiring or overloading an outlet. There's a lot of fake trees out there that can catch fire, if you're a real tree person, if the tree is too dry, these trees are basically like kindling that can cause a house fire.

Melissa Whitfield  2:55 
How can we prevent or treat burns from hot beverages?

Dr. Alan Pang  3:00 
Well, you know, always important to, you know, when you can have a covered cup, like a thermos, otherwise, we see a lot of hot beverage burns in our children. Because, you know, children like to grab things, and they don't know better, so just trying to avoid hot drinks around kids, placing them not near the edge of a counter or table, just making sure we're always safe about where we place our hot beverages and how we drink our hot beverages.

Melissa Whitfield  3:27 
What safety tips can you give us for preventing burns in the kitchen or around the griller smoker during the holiday meal prep?

Dr. Alan Pang  3:34 
Once again, you know, children don't always know what they're doing, so it's always important to keep them away from the cooking area. This can be difficult sometimes when we're outside, but, you know, making sure kids are safe. But also, once again, if you're cooking something or you're done cooking something and it's hot, make sure it's on the edge of the table. If you're cooking on the stove with pots and pans, make sure the pot and pan handle doesn't stick out into the walkway from the stove. These are some simple things that can prevent bad burns when we're cooking. If we do have a fire on the stove, a cooking fire, making sure not to try to carry it outside or something like that, to dump it, because usually during that transport, you'll either trip on something, or you could burn yourself or something in your house. You know the safest thing to do when you have a fire in the stove is just to drown it out with either some flour or a cover, if it's in a pan, to stop the fire rather than carrying it somewhere.

Melissa Whitfield  4:29 
What are some precautions we should take around the house, and especially, I think you mentioned children getting burned, but a lot of these houses, we have fireplaces and heaters, candles, holiday lights, maybe fireworks.

Dr. Alan Pang  4:41 
Yeah, of course, in, you know, like I mentioned before, you know, keeping our kids safe is always important. Make sure they stay away from the dangerous hot things, whether that's putting a little barricade around the fireplace, but even those barricades can sometimes get hot, so just keeping a close eye on the kiddos, and when it comes to heaters, making sure those heaters aren't sitting you know, on all the time, just sitting on our bed, because sometimes mattresses can be flammable. Candles, keeping them away from things that could burn up, whether that's, you know, paper or, you know, if you're in the kitchen, things like wrappers and things from our food. Specifically for holiday lights, you know, making sure we don't nail those holiday lights into our house, because sometimes you can expose wires and get electrical injuries. Actually, children are known to chew on these holiday lights and get injuries at the corner of their mouths. These electrical injuries are always terrible and are known to get worse over time, so making sure the kids aren't kind of just hanging around, chewing on things, getting in the things they're not supposed to get into.

Melissa Whitfield  5:44 
If someone does get burned, what can we do immediately to reduce severe injury?

Dr. Alan Pang  5:48 
The most important thing is always to remove the source of burning. So if you spill hot water on yourself that might look like just running it under cold water, if it's on our arm or our leg, if it's some food that fell on you that's hot, you know, getting that off using a spatula or something, and then again, running it under cold water, the most important thing we can do is remove that source of burning. And sometimes, when we get that hot liquid, maybe on a shirt sleeve, taking that shirt off would be important.

Melissa Whitfield  6:17 
What are some mistakes people might make when treating burns at home like sometimes they say to use butter.

Dr. Alan Pang  6:23 
Yeah. So there's a lot of home remedies, and you know, I would always recommend not to do those. Honestly, the most important thing is to rinse it off with some cool water. And you know, don't do the butter, don't do the mustard, these food products, these home remedies, really don't do anything for the burn and can increase risk for infection. Honestly, you don't need to do anything on it, as long as you've rinsed it off. You can put a dressing on it, and depending on what type of burn it is or how bad it is, you can either come to the emergency department and we'll take care of it, or go to the clinic and we'll take care of it, but I would recommend leaving the dressing and the treatment up to the professionals.

Melissa Whitfield  7:00 
Then how can we be able to tell if we need to go to the emergency room for a burn?

Dr. Alan Pang  7:04 
Of course, so there's only several times where we would recommend that some of our guidelines include, if you have pain that you just can't control at home with, say, Tylenol or Ibuprofen, then you need to come to the emergency room for better pain medications and wound care. If you burn your hands or your feet, these functional areas are important to our day to day lives, so we want to make sure we don't miss something that perhaps needs an intervention, if you burn your face or your eyes, or if you inhale something that's, you know, very hot, like hot steam, where you feel like you can't talk or breathe, those are important times. Or if the burn just covers a large part of your body. When we have large burns over a large part of our body, usually that requires you to come to the emergency room so we can admit you to the hospital and take care of you.

Melissa Whitfield  7:49 
Now, I know you mentioned that for some burns around the house that we just run it under water, but do you recommend that we carry anything with us if we're traveling?

Dr. Alan Pang  7:57 
Yeah, I think if you're particularly concerned about being prepared for these burns, you could always just carry some Aquafor with you, which is a water soluble kind of Vaseline ointment or some lotion if you get a first degree burn. But really, if you have a bigger burn, or a burn that's more serious, it's going to really require some hospital care, rather than anything, you can carry with you.

Melissa Whitfield  8:22 
Well, is there anything else that you would like to add?

Dr. Alan Pang  8:22 
Yeah, I mean, this is the holiday season. I know we're all trying to have a joyful time with our family, and it's just as important for us to be aware of the dangers of this time so we can all enjoy it without hurting ourselves with burns. Another thing to keep in mind is, as the weather gets colder for this holiday season, it's always important to keep ourselves warm. They may not be a burn, but we can always get things like frostbite. So important things to remember are the parts that are furthest away from our heart and our lungs, where we can keep things warm, like the tips of our noses or the or the tips of our fingers and our ears, we got to make sure to bundle up to protect ourselves from that cold.

Melissa Whitfield  9:02 
What happens to those extremities if we do get frostbite?

Dr. Alan Pang  9:05 
So when we get frostbite, what's actually happening is that the water molecules in our cells are freezing, and it's causing injury, as much as you should come to a burn surgeon if you have frostbite or burns, they're very different injuries, actually. So that's why it's important to keep those fingertips and the tips of our noses and our toes warm when we when we go outside.

Melissa Whitfield  9:26 
Well, thank you very much again for coming on our podcast and talking to us about burns and sharing all these safety tips with us. Thank you.

Dr. Alan Pang  9:33 
Of course, thank you for having me.

Melissa Whitfield  9:34 
And can't wait to have you back.

Dr. Alan Pang  9:36 
I'm excited to come back, and I hope everyone has a happy holiday.

Melissa Whitfield  9:39 
Thank you.

Melissa Whitfield  9:42 
Thanks for listening to Texas Tech Health Check. Make sure to subscribe or follow wherever you listen to podcasts. This information is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice. Always seek immediate medical advice from your physician or your healthcare provider for questions regarding your health or medical condition to. Texas Tech Health Check is brought to you by Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and produced by TR Castillo, Suzanna, suzannados, Mark Hendricks, Kay Williams, Hope Caperton and me, Melissa Whitfield.