Background: Burns are a major cause of death and disability worldwide. Today biological dressings have become an integral part of modern burn care. Using this method, in otherwise healthy young adults, the size of burn relative to the total body surface area (TBSA) correlating with a 50% mortality rate has increased from 30% to 80%. Due to a lack of experience and an interest in using biological dressings in Iran, as a developing country, the aim of this study was to compare patient outcome using the biological dressing vs. conventional treatment in patients with massive burns.

Methods: In this clinical trial study, 118 burn patients (30 to 75% TBSA) were enrolled. The patients were divided in two groups. Those in the conventional treatment group had not accepted treatment with a biological dressing.  The second group agreed to treatment with biological dressing, a pig skin xenograft known as Xenoderm. Significant differences were evaluated using the unpaired Student's t test, the Mann-Whitney U test and the χ2 test. 

Results: Mortality rates in the conventional treatment group (n=53) and biological dressing group (n=65) were 35% (19) and 10.8% (7), respectively (p=0.001). Excluding those patients who died, the mean hospital stay was 31.3 days in the conventional treatment group versus 18.2 days in the biological dressing group (p=0.0005), and number of dressings was 22.1 versus 9.9 (p=0.0005), respectively. Three patients in the conventional treatment group were transferred to a tertiary-care hospital after three weeks of treatment. The most commonly burned areas were the upper limb, lower limb and trunk.

Conclusions: The results of this study indicate that biological dressings give a better outcome and decrease the hospital stay and the number of dressings. A randomized clinical trial is warranted.