Letters
Indigenous health Emergency medicine
Volume 196 - Issue 4

A case series of grevillea seed burns

Authors:  Joseph Luo, Tania McWilliams and Fiona Wood

Med J Aust 2012; 196 (4): 244. || doi: 10.5694/mja11.11538
Published online: 5 March 2012
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To the Editor: Since the publication of Knight and colleagues’ case report on the topic, five more patients have presented with burns caused by Grevillea pyramidalis ssp. leucadendron, or maangga berry.1 Traditionally, these berries have been used by Aboriginal Australians for tattooing.1 As in the cases described by Knight and colleagues,1 these burns were sustained by Indigenous children aged 8–11 years in northern Western Australia and required specialist burn care.

Two patients sustained 1.5% total body surface area, deep partial-thickness burns to their left forearms, which required surgical management. Three patients presented with superficial partial-thickness left forearm burns, which were managed non-operatively via telehealth. Four of the five patients were only referred to the state burns unit 7 days after the initial injury, and one patient was lost to follow-up. Management of these patients’ injuries was limited by compliance issues.

Grevillea seeds can be responsible for deeper burns, which require surgical intervention, and superficial burns, which can be treated non-operatively. In this series, the burns occurred in Indigenous children with darker skin, which often has poorer scar outcomes. This demographic, coupled with compliance issues and late referral, make grevillea seed burns a difficult clinical entity to treat. Community education and health staff awareness is imperative in helping us provide optimal treatment in the future.

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