Factors involved in burn mortality: a multivariate statistical approach based on discriminant analysis.

This article suggests an alternative statistical model for studying the mortality of burned patients: discriminant analysis. This model was applied to our population of 532 patients among whom 71 died. It is not the first time that this model has been applied to assess burn mortality, although it is not frequently used for that application. We found four factors that are statistically significant: age, TBSA, inhalation injury and sex (female). Discriminant analysis allowed us to demonstrate an impressive correlation between death, age and TBSA; inhalation injury by itself and sex, the two other significant factors in our study, seem to have a minor influence on the final outcome of the burned patients and their predictive value is virtually nil. The advantages of this statistical model are compared with logistic regression, the commonly chosen statistical method.