Rehabilitation concerns in electrical burn patients: a review of the literature.

Patients with electrical burns have problems which are unique to their type of injury. In the acute stage, amputations, peripheral neuropathy, and entrapment syndromes occur more commonly in electricity-induced trauma than in thermal burns. In addition, clinicians must be vigilant because peripheral neuropathy, quadriplegia, paraplegia, and entrapment syndromes may have an insidious onset and become manifest days to months after the original injury. Both electrical and thermal burn patients are subjected to two types of trauma: the insult caused by the acute event, and complications which occur because of poor positioning, bulky dressings, intramuscular injections, and neurotoxic medications.