Doctors in the United Kingdom have encountered a rare skin condition in a child who kept a switched-on laptop on his stomach every day, according to Gizmodo, as reported by infohub.kz.
The school-age boy was admitted to the emergency department with a red-brown net-like rash on his lower abdomen. A nurse initially mistook the marks for spontaneous bruises, while doctors suspected liver injury or the aftermath of a childhood fight. However, scans and tests showed no damage to internal organs, and the patient was discharged home for observation.
A few weeks later, the child returned to hospital with a worsening condition. Pink patches appeared on his abdomen, indicating tissue breakdown of the skin. Follow-up questioning revealed that the boy was being homeschooled and spent up to eight hours a day with a laptop on his stomach, often kept plugged in to charge. It was the prolonged exposure to heat from the device's casing that caused the damage.
Doctors diagnosed a condition known as "baked skin syndrome." The condition occurs with regular heating of tissues and damage to small blood vessels. The child was given a dressing and told not to place the device on his body. Within a few months, his skin had fully recovered.
Doctors note that as remote learning grows more popular, such cases among children may become more common.