Immunologic Phenomena in Burn Injuries

Bacterial infections continue to cause more deaths following severe thermal injury than any other single factor, and a depression of the defense mechanism is felt by many to contribute significantly to this apparent increased susceptibility to infection. An important part of the overall host defense mechanism is the ability to produce specific antibody in response to an antigenic stimulus. This aspect has been studied incompletely following thermal injury, even though both active and passive immunity to certain bacteria have been shown to prevent progressive bacterial invasion in burn wounds and surgical wounds of experimental animals. Alexander and co-workers1have been able to induce good protection against infection byPseudomonas aeruginosaby immunization with a purified extract of the organism. Feller et al,2Walker et al,3and McMeel et al4obtained similar protection with whole cell vaccines to a single strain ofPseudomonas. Jones and Luwbury5