Burn Patient Acuity Demographics, Scar Contractures, and Rehabilitation Treatment Time Related to Patient Outcomes: The ACT Study

In 2008, the U.S. Department of Defense funded a rehabilitation study through the American Burn Association titled "Burn patient acuity demographics, scar contractures, and rehabilitation treatment time related to patient outcomes," commonly known at the ACT study. The ACT was a multi-institutional, prospective, observational, and quasirandomized investigation of the acute hospital course of 307 patients. The ACT specifically emphasized the capture of factors that may impact the physical outcome of patients with burn injury including burn severity, daily rehabilitation interventions such as mobility and splinting, and detailed skin grafting episodes. In particular, the effect that the amount of daily rehabilitation time patients received as it related to range of motion measured at the time of acute hospital discharge of areas affected by the burn injury was analyzed. The information contained herein is intended to give the interested reader an overview of the extent and breadth of the ACT dataset in terms of parameters available for further investigation. This information is also intended to be used as a basic reference for conduct of the ACT study in future reports.