Boy diagnosed with rare "toasted skin" syndrome after daily laptop use
UK doctors writing in BMJ Case Reports describe an unusual case in which a boy developed strange markings on his abdomen that were ultimately traced to his habit of resting a laptop on his stomach every day. The path to that explanation first led physicians through suspicion of trauma and several inconclusive tests.
Physicians Mara Znagoveanu and Edward Artley detailed the case of a boy who arrived at a UK emergency department with an unusual rash on his abdomen, publishing their findings this week in the journal BMJ Case Reports. The affected area formed a roughly 15-centimeter-wide patch of flat, reddish-brown lines that interlaced into irregular circular shapes, giving the skin a lace-like appearance.
The boy, described only as being in mid-childhood, reported no pain, and the marks were neither warm nor tender to the touch. Neither he nor his parents could initially recall any injury that might explain the pattern. He showed no fever, fatigue, or other systemic symptoms, and his overall growth and medical history appeared normal. Emergency department nurses first suspected spontaneous bruising, but a physical exam turned up no other skin issues or abdominal tenderness.
Searching for answers, doctors ordered a chest X-ray, which revealed a small area of cloudiness over the boy's left lung, suggesting a buildup of fluid or cells such as pus or blood. While blood was being drawn for further tests, the boy finally mentioned an incident from about a week earlier, around the time the rash appeared: during rough play with his siblings, he had been shoved into a chair. He said he had kept quiet earlier to avoid getting his siblings in trouble.
That detail pushed doctors toward suspecting a traumatic internal injury, prompting a CT scan of his abdomen. The scan found no injury aside from the lung finding already seen, which may simply have been an incidental sign of a minor, unrelated infection. In the end, the markings were not linked to any trauma at all — they were traced instead to the boy's daily habit of placing his laptop directly on his stomach, resulting in so-called "toasted skin" syndrome, a condition caused by prolonged, low-level heat exposure to the skin.
