Appearance concerns, psychosocial outcomes, and the feasibility of implementing an online intervention for adolescents receiving outpatient burn care

The current study assessed the prevalence of appearance concerns, psychosocial difficulty, and use of an appearance-focused social and psychological support resource (Young Person’s Face IT; YPF) within a population of teens (12-17 year-olds) receiving outpatient burn care with the goal to assess the feasibility of routine use of the resource in outpatient burn care. The study sample included 78 patients ages 12-17 receiving outpatient care for burns at 1 hospital. Appearance concerns were measured via the Burn Outcomes Questionnaire Appearance Subscale, the Appearance Subscale of the Body Esteem Scale for Adolescents, and a 2-part question which asked participants directly about appearance concerns related to the burn injury. A large majority (70.0%) of study participants reported appearance concerns on at least 1 appearance measure and girls reported more burn-related appearance concerns compared to boys. Psychosocial difficulty was measured via the Pediatric Symptom Checklist-17 (PSC-17) and measures of social functioning were collected and compared within the sample by burn size, burn location, sex, and appearance concerns. Internalizing symptoms were prevalent on the PSC-17 (18.6% risk) and decreased self-worth and increased social anxiety symptoms were significantly associated with having appearance concerns. Although interest in YPF was high (78.3%), actual use of the resource among those who signed up to pilot it (n=46 participants) was low (19.4% use). Results indicate that there is a need for and interest in appearance-focused social anxiety resources for adolescents with burn injuries such as YPF, but more research is needed to understand its feasibility in clinical practice. Key words: Pediatric Burns, Appearance, Psychosocial Functioning, Young Person’s Face IT, Burn Outcomes Questionnaire, Body Esteem Scal

Translation and Cross-cultural Validation of the English Young Adult Burn Outcome Questionnaire (YABOQ) in Spanish

The Young Adult Burn Outcome Questionnaire (YABOQ) is a validated, English-language patient-reported outcome assessment of young adults' recovery from burn injury across 15 scale domains. We evaluated the cross-cultural validity of a newly developed Spanish version of the YABOQ. Secondary data from English- and Spanish-speaking burn survivors (17 to 30 years of age) were obtained from the Multicenter Benchmarking Study. We conducted classic psychometric analyses and evaluated the measurement equivalence of the English and Spanish YABOQs in logistic and ordinal logistic regression differential item functioning analyses. All multi-item scales in the Spanish YABOQ demonstrated adequate reliability except the Pain and Itch scales. One item in the Perceived Appearance scale showed differential item functioning across English- and Spanish-speaking burn survivors, but the observed differential item functioning had no clinically significant impact on scale-level Perceived Appearance scores. Our findings support the cross-cultural validity of the YABOQ Physical Function, Perceived Appearance, Sexual Function, Emotion, Family Function, Family Concern, Satisfaction with Symptom Relief, Satisfaction with Role, Work Reintegration and Religion scales among English- and Spanish-speaking young adult burn survivors. This work supports the use of these English and Spanish YABOQ scales to assess the effect of therapeutic interventions on young adults' burn outcomes in pooled analyses and to assess disparities in young adults' burn outcomes across language groups