Seminar ·
Building a burn rehabilitation pathway where there is no rehabilitation service
Role: Invited speaker · 14th National Congress of Plastic Surgery, Dhaka
Draft — not yet reviewed
This account is a working draft and has not been checked by Prof. Papon.
The talk
Burn surgery in Bangladesh is not usually limited by operating capacity. It is limited by what happens in the year afterwards: pressure garments that are not worn, splints that are not adjusted, and contractures that form quietly while a patient waits for a follow-up appointment they cannot afford to travel to.
This talk set out how a burn service can build a rehabilitation pathway using what it already has — ward staff, families, and the follow-up clinic — rather than waiting for a therapy department that may not arrive.
Main points
Teaching the family is not a substitute for therapy; it is the therapy, in a setting where the patient goes home to a village. The garment that gets worn is the one someone at home understands the purpose of.
Splinting decisions made on the ward in the first weeks determine how much surgery will be needed in the second year. A service that measures itself only on acute survival will keep operating on the same contractures indefinitely.
More from the practice
- Journal article
Free functional muscle transfer for post-burn elbow contracture: a five-year single-centre series
Khan Papon MRK, Hasan MT, Sultana R · Bangladesh Journal of Plastic Surgery · 12(2):88–97
- Social work
Cleft camp 38 — Jamalpur Sadar, with the upazila health complex
41 free procedures over two days · 316 patients screened