Shriners Burns Institutes

Cincinnati Burns Unit

In 1958, when miracle drugs had virtually eliminated the crippling effects of dreaded polio, the Shrine decided to expand into the area of burns treatment and research. More than 6,000 children were dying each year as a result of burns.

Action was authorized in 1962 to establish the first of a series of Burns Institutes. The first burn hospital was opened at Galveston, Texas, on November 1, 1963;the second was activated at Cincinnati, Ohio, on February 1, 1964, and the third opened at Boston, Massachusetts the following month. The fourth Burn Hospital opened April 14, 1997 in Sacramento, California along with the new Northern California Orthopedic Hospital.

Each now has 30 beds and competent staffs who contribute much to medical science. They have revolutionized burns treatment and given hope to youthful patients, whose conditions for admission are similar to the orthopedically challenged child.

Before Shrine Burns Institutes came into being, a child with severe burns had a 50 per cent chance of survival. Now, 90 per cent of these lives are saved.

Shrine Burns Institutes are high cost hospitals. A good percentage of the expense is in research, made in conjunction with the Harvard University Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, University of Texas Medical Branch and John Seely Hospital, and the University of Cincinnati Medical School in connection with Cincinnati General Hospital.

Severely burned patients require expensive treatment - in skin grafts, poultices, infection control vaccines, bacteria-free isolation wards, and in some cases as many as 100 pints of blood. The average per-patient cost can be as much as $100,000 in the severely burned patient and there are cases where the treatment has cost nearly $1,000,000, if the treatment were available anywhere else.

In the last decade, the Shrine has turned its attention, in addition to orthopedics and burns, to spinal cord injuries in children. In 1980, the first spinal cord injury unit was opened in Philadelphia, with the second opening in 1983 in Chicago and the third in San Francisco in 1984. These units are located in the orthopedic units in these cities.

Dr. Bruce G. MacMillan, former chief of staff of the Cincinnati Burns Institute, hailed the Shrine's program of assistance to orthopedically challenged and burned children as "perhaps the only true medical philanthropy in the nation."