Chemical Burn due to Mustard: A Case Report

Yu, Kyung Han; Lim, Soo A; Lee, Dong Lark; Yoon, Yong Il

Abstract

PURPOSE
Mustard (Brassica spp.) has been used as a home remedy to cure various diseases like garlic, but its side effects like contact dermatitis due to local application at skin cannot be ignored. As a chemical burn due to local application of mustard has never been reported in Korea up to now, we will present a case in which who got a deep second degree burn due to local application of mustard.
METHODS
A 56 year-old female patient who had pain at right wrist, knee, ankle, applied mustard paste for 5 hours. After one day, she visited hospital with bullous lesion with pain at wrist, knee, ankle and we confirmed that she got second degree chemical burn wound. During 3 days after admission, we performed foam dressing. And 4 days after admission, the burn wound was considered as deep second degree burn wound, we performed dressing with cultured allogenic keratinocyte (KaloDerm(R), Tegoscience, Seoul, Korea).
RESULTS
After dressing with cultured allogenic keratinocyte, while exudate was being secreted by the lesion, saline wet dressing was applied. Exudate secretion decreased 7 days after application of cultured allogenic keratinocyte, and it stopped after 9 days. And it took about 10 days to remove dressing materials from the wound. When the dressing material had been removed, epithelialization was completed.
CONCLUSION
Local application of pungent material like mustard or garlic as a traditional treatment is widely known, and side effect such as chemical burn due to garlic or contact dermatitis due to mustard also has been reported. We had another 2 cases of chemical burn due to garlic in addition to this case, and all 3 patients had local application for longer time than recommended time in traditional treatment. So, even if local application of them is effective in various disease, we should be aware that abuse of this traditional treatment should be avoided.