Attrition of Well-Healed Burn Survivors to a 6-Month Community-Based Exercise Program: A Retrospective Evaluation.

Atkins, Whitley C; Romero, Steven A; Moralez, Gilbert; Huang, Mu; Cramer, Matthew N; Foster, Josh; McKenna, Zachary J; Crandall, Craig G

The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether burn survivors have lower adherence compared to non-burned control individuals during a 6-month community-based exercise program. In burn survivors, we sought to answer if there was a relation between the size of the burn injury and dropout frequency. Fifty-two burn survivors and 15 non-burned controls (n = 67) were recruited for a 6-month community-based (ie, non-supervised), progressive, exercise training program. During the exercise program, 27% (ie, 4 of the 15 enrolled) of the non-burned individuals dropped out of the study, while 37% (ie, 19 of the 52) of the burn survivors dropped out from the study. There was no difference in the percentage of individuals who dropped out between groups (P =.552). There was no difference in size of the burn injury, expressed as percent body surface area burned (%BSA) between the burn survivors that dropped out versus those who completed the exercise regimen (P =.951). We did not observe a relation between %BSA burned and dropouts (log odds = −0.15–0.01(%BSA), B = −0.01, SE = 0.015, P =.541). There was no effect of %BSA burned on the probability of dropout [Exp (B) = 0.991, 95% CI (0.961, 1.020)] and there were no differences in the percentage of individuals who dropped out of the study based on %BSA burned (χ 2(1) = 0.44, P =.51). These data demonstrate that burn survivors have similar exercise adherence relative to a non-burned group and the extent of a burn injury does not affect exercise program adherence.

COMMUNITY-based programs; BODY surface area; INDIVIDUAL differences; EXERCISE therapy

Journal of Burn Care & Research, 2023, Vol 44, Issue 6, p1478

1559-047X

Academic Journal

10.1093/jbcr/irad063