A 34-year-old male with a history of ulcerative colitis and opioid dependence had placed an electronic cigarette in his right pant pocket which spontaneously combusted while shopping in public. His pants caught fire and were immediately removed to extinguish flames. He was brought to the emergency department by an ambulance.
Examination revealed a 15 % TBSA circumferential deep partial-thickness and full-thickness burn of the right leg (Fig. 1). An epidural was placed for pain control, and on post-burn day 2, the patient was taken to the operating room for tangential excision with skin allograft placement to a 2000 cm2 surface area. The allografted areas were dressed with N-Terface (MEDLINE Industries, Inc., IL, USA) and ACTICOAT (Smith & Nephew, London, UK), and the debrided superficial partial-thickness burns were dressed with Mepilex Ag (Molnlycke, Gothenburg, Sweden). On post-burn day 6, the allograft was removed, revealing healthy subcutaneous tissue ready for skin autografting. Two thousand four hundred square centimeters of meshed split-thickness skin grafts were used to cover the wounds. The autografts showed an excellent take on post-burn day 9, and the patient was discharged home on post-burn day 16 (Figs. 2 and 3).