A Review of the Most Impactful Published Pharmacotherapy-Pertinent Literature of 2019 and 2020 for Clinicians Caring for Patients With Thermal or Inhalation Injury

J Burn Care Res. 2022 Jul 1;43(4):912-920. doi: 10.1093/jbcr/irab220.

Abstract

Keeping abreast with current literature can be challenging, especially for practitioners caring for patients sustaining thermal or inhalation injury. Practitioners caring for patients with thermal injuries publish in a wide variety of journals, which further increases the complexity for those with resource limitations. Pharmacotherapy research continues to be a minority focus in primary literature. This review is a renewal of previous years' work to facilitate extraction and review of the most recent pharmacotherapy-centric studies in patients with thermal and inhalation injury. Sixteen geographically dispersed, board-certified pharmacists participated in the review. A MeSH-based, filtered search returned 1536 manuscripts over the previous 2-year period. After manual review and exclusions, only 98 (6.4%) manuscripts were determined to have a potential impact on current pharmacotherapy practices and included in the review. A summary of the 10 articles that scored highest are included in the review. Nearly half of the reviewed manuscripts were assessed to lack a significant impact on current practice. Despite an increase in published literature over the previous 2-year review, the focus and quality remain unchanged. There remains a need for investment in well-designed, high impact, pharmacotherapy-pertinent research for patients sustaining thermal or inhalation injuries.

Publication types

  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Burns*
  • Humans
  • Patient Care