Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms after Exposure to Two Fire Disasters: Comparative Study
Abstract
This study investigated traumatic stress symptoms in severely burned survivors of two fire disasters and two comparison groups of patients with "non-disaster" burn injuries, as well as risk factors associated with acute and chronic stress symptoms. Patients were admitted to one out of eight burn centers in The Netherlands or Belgium. The Impact of Event Scale (IES) was administered to 61 and 33 survivors respectively of two fire disasters and 54 and 57 patients with "non-disaster" burn etiologies at 2 weeks, 3, 6, 12 and 24 months after the event. We used latent growth modeling (LGM) analyses to investigate the stress trajectories and predictors in the two disaster and two comparison groups. The results showed that initial traumatic stress reactions in disaster survivors with severe burns are more intense and prolonged during several months relative to survivors of "non-disaster" burn injuries. Excluding the industrial fire group, all participants' symptoms on average decreased over the two year period. Burn severity, peritraumatic anxiety and dissociation predicted the long-term negative outcomes only in the industrial fire group. In conclusion, fire disaster survivors appear to experience higher levels of traumatic stress symptoms on the short term, but the long-term outcome appears dependent on factors different from the first response. Likely, the younger age, and several beneficial post-disaster factors such as psychosocial aftercare and social support, along with swift judicial procedures, contributed to the positive outcome in one disaster cohort.
Pixel-Bot Summary
AI-generated analysis
π― Relevance Assessment: After careful analysis, this paper does not meet the primary inclusion criteria for this systematic review on PTSD symptom trajectories.
π Exclusion Rationale: The paper may focus on a different aspect of PTSD (e.g., treatment outcomes, risk factors, prevalence) or lacks the longitudinal trajectory analysis required by the review protocol.
π Content Analysis: While the paper may discuss PTSD-related topics, it does not specifically examine symptom trajectories over time using appropriate statistical methods (e.g., growth curve modeling, latent class analysis).
β Recommendation: EXCLUDE β This paper does not align with the eligibility criteria. The focus or methodology does not match the systematic review's scope of longitudinal PTSD symptom trajectory analysis.
βΉοΈ In the full version, Pixel-Bot generates unique summaries for each paper based on your specific eligibility criteria.
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DEMO: PTSD Symptom Trajectories
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