Attrition Of Well-healed Burn Survivors To A 6-month Community-based Exercise Program: A Retrospective Evaluation

The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether burn survivors have lower adherence compared to non-burned control individuals during a 6-month community-based exercise program. In burn survivors we sought to answer if there was a relation between the size of the burn injury and dropout frequency. Fifty-two burn survivors and 15 non-burned controls (n=67) were recruited for a 6-month community-based (i.e., non-supervised), progressive, exercise training program. During the exercise program, 27% (i.e., 4 of 15 enrolled) of the non-burned individuals dropped out of the study, while 37% (i.e., 19 of 52) of the burn survivors dropped out from the study. There was no difference in the percentage of individuals who dropped out between groups (p = 0.552). There was no difference in size of the burn injury, expressed as percent body surface area burned (%BSA) between the burn-survivors that dropped out versus those who completed the exercise regimen (p = 0.951). We did not observe a relation between %BSA burned and dropouts (log odds = -0.15-0.01(%BSA), B= -0.01, SE = 0.015, p = 0.541). There was no effect of %BSA burned on the probability of dropout [Exp (B) = 0.991, 95% CI (0.961, 1.020)] and there were no differences in the percentage of individuals who dropped out of the study based on %BSA burned (χ2(1) = 0.44, p = 0.51). These data demonstrate that burn survivors have similar exercise adherence relative to a non-burned group and the extent of a burn injury does not affect exercise program adherence.