Contact burns from a night storage heater—Accident or abuse?

Abstract

A 7-month-old female infant was presented by the parents in the emergency department of a hospital with second-degree contact burns on both legs. The parents reported that the child was unattended and crawled against the night storage stove in the children’s room only dressed in a bodysuit. The clinical forensic examination 10 days later revealed striped, partially parallel burns involving multiple joints on the outside of the right thigh and back of the lower leg, on the dorsum of both feet and the toes as well as a large area on the outside of the left lower leg with delimitated striped parts. In the course of an inspection of the parents’ apartment with measurement and assessment of the three night storage heaters, it was first determined that the injury patterns on the child’s legs matched with the air outlet grid of both night storage heaters in the living room and parents’ bedroom (identical models) but not with that of the night storage heater in the children’s room. It was possible to reconstruct a potential sequence of events by supplementary information of a technical expert on the corresponding night storage heaters and a literature search. This case illustrates the potential dangers of night storage heaters for unattended infants and toddlers if they are not properly secured and the children are unattended. It also underlines the importance of an interdisciplinary reconstruction, when necessary, including a detailed inspection of the location in order to distinguish a possible accident from child abuse.