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Yes.
Just to block any further burning to areas not wrapped up (first degree burns) as the sunlight will get through windows or windshieds of vehicles while driving and flying. Sunburns can even be extended or deepen if you wear thin clothing like white thin t-shirts. Learned that many years ago as an intern from our venerable burn attending.
Only used the sunblock to the second degrees to keep dressings from sticking to the open wounds. If you wrap the patient's wounds in sterile gauze (Kerlix) do not apply them dry on the second degree wound beds. The result will be the sticking of the soft bandage to the wound and then you are repeating the pealing off of the bandage at the burn center like the shirt described earlier. This will then act like a wet to dry dressing and inadvertantly see debridement of the open second degree at a time of acute injury where it is not necessary at this phase or potentially never. If we had a barrier like adaptic or xeroform/xeroflo you could have used that as a barrier. Typically Silvadene (AgSD) is used. As second degree burns represent a loss of the natural barrier to the environment they should be wrapped up if possible. The sunblock was our temporary fix for a barrier and it worked. It is either that or wrap the wounds in a sterile blue sheet is available. Keep it lose so it does not stick to the open burns prior to us seeing it in the burn center.
Thanks,
Ducth Matthews
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