No abstract

This study documents skull fracture characteristics on infant porcine specimens under known impact conditions with respect to age and interface. A single impact causing fracture was conducted on the skull of porcine specimens aged 2-28 days (n = 76). Paired rigid and compliant impacts at the same energy were conducted at each specimen age. Impact force, impact duration, and fracture length were recorded. Energy required to initiate skull fracture increased with specimen age. For a given energy, impact of the skull with a compliant interface caused more fracture damage than with a rigid interface for specimens aged under 17 days, but less damage for specimens aged 24-28 days. The documentation of energy required to cause fracture and resulting fracture propagation with respect to impact interface and age may be of critical importance in forensic investigations of infant skull trauma.

In this small survey, the first of its kind to focus on elderly patients, phototherapy appears to be well-tolerated, safe and efficacious in the short term. Further thought and investigation should be given to delivering phototherapy to an ageing population.

Dyskeratosis congenita (DC) is a clinically and genetically heterogeneous multisystem bone marrow failure disorder of telomere maintenance, which may present with dermatological features. The main cause of mortality is bone marrow failure, often developing in the second decade of life, although pulmonary disease and malignancies such as squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) may also prove fatal. We report the case of a 28-year-old man with X-linked DC and confirmed DKC1 gene mutation. In addition to the classic triad of nail dystrophy, hyperpigmentation and oral leucoplakia, the patient had actinic keratosis (AK) and photodamaged skin, hitherto under-recognized features of this condition. Awareness of the clinical presentation of DC is important, as accurate clinical and molecular diagnosis affords patients and their families genetic counselling, cancer prevention and screening measures, and planning for complications such as bone marrow failure.

The objective of this study was to document patterns of fracture on infant porcine skulls aged 2-28 days (n = 57) because of a single, high energy blunt impact to the parietal bone with rigid (nondeformable) and compliant (deformable) interfaces. Fracture patterns were mapped using Geographic Information System software. For the same generated impact force, the rigid interface produced more fractures than the compliant interface for all ages. This study also showed that this increased level of impact energy versus an earlier study using a lower energy resulted in new sites of fracture initiation and also caused previously defined fractures that propagate into an adjacent bone. Several unique characteristics of bone and diastatic fracture were documented as a function of specimen age, impact energy, and interface. These data describe some baseline characteristics of skull fracture using an animal model that may help guide future studies from forensic case files.