Traumatic asphyxia in the young

Excerpt

The recent report by Cortis et al. provides a comprehensive overview of traumatic/crush asphyxia as well as drawing attention to potential dangers to young children from automatic revolving doors [1]. The authors demonstrate the key role that forensic pathology can play in identifying dangerous situations and devices, and in disseminating this information to the wider professional community [2]. Young children are at increased risk of traumatic asphyxia in addition to other more common accidents such as drowning, as they often fail to appreciate possible dangers, and when confronted by a potentially lethal situation are unable to self-extricate. The latter may be simply due to poor muscle development, or to a lack of understanding of how disentangle or remove themselves from a particular place [2, 3]. …