BACKGROUND Burns are one of the most important health problems in communities. traumatic injuries, especially traumatic brain injury (TBI) associated with burns, may increase disability and mortality. In addition to preventing burns, any action for a better treatment approach and early detection of concomitant traumatic injuries can reduce complications, disability, and treatment costs. We aimed to investigate the outcome of children with burn injury with and without TBI. METHODS In this cross-sectional study, 392 children with burn injuries treated at Motahari Hospital in Tehran, Iran from 2018-2019 were enrolled. Patient demographics, burn injury information and TBI-related information including head trauma and fracture were recorded in a checklist. Patients were divided into two groups of death (24 people) or discharge (368 people) in terms of outcome and the underlying variables were compared in the two groups. RESULTS There was no significant difference between the mean age of patients and gender in the two groups. The difference in the length of hospital stay, inhalation injury and skull fracture in the two groups was not statistically significant. The mean burn severity based on Total Body Surface Area (TBSA) and the frequency of TBI in the deceased group was significantly higher (P=0. 001). CONCLUSION The severity of burns based on TBSA and TBI is associated with increased mortality among children with burn injuries. The results suggest the need to examine children with burn injuries for TBI using clinical examination or imaging.

Background: Considering the cognitive and linguistic complexity of discourse production, it is expected that individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) should face difficulties in this task. Therefore, clinical examination of discourse has become a useful tool for studying and assessment of communication skills of people suffering from TBI. Among different genres of discourse, persuasive discourse is considered as a more cognitively demanding task. However, little is known about persuasive discourse in individuals suffering from TBI.Objectives: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of adults with TBI on a task of spoken persuasive discourse to determine the impaired linguistic measures.Patients and Methods: Thirteen TBI nonaphasic Persian speaking individuals, ranged between 19 to 40 years (Mean=25.64 years; SD= 6.10) and 59 healthy adults matched by age, were asked to perform the persuasive discourse task. The task included asking the participants to express their opinion on a topic, and after the analysis of the produced discourse, the two groups were compared on the basis of their language productivity, sentential complexity, maze ratio and cohesion ratio.Results: The TBI group produced discourses with less productivity, sentential complexity, cohesion ratio and more maze ratio compared the control group.Conclusions: As it is important to consider acquired communication disorders particularly discourse impairment of brain injured patients along with their other clinical impairments and regarding the fact that persuasive discourse is crucial in academic and social situations, the persuasive discourse task presented in this study could be a useful tool for speech therapists, intending to evaluate communication disorders in patients with TBI.