© AP Photo/HO via Quincy Hearld-WhigIn this undated photo provided by the journal Pediatrics, a 12 year-old boy is pictured using a laptop on balanced on his bare legs. According to recent medical reports, exposing skin to the high temperatures created by laptops can lead to 'toasted skin syndrome,' an unusual-looking mottled skin condition caused by long-term heat exposure.
Have you ever worked on your laptop computer with it sitting on your lap, heating up your legs? If so, you might want to rethink that habit.
Doing it a lot can lead to "toasted skin syndrome," an unusual-looking mottled skin condition caused by long-term heat exposure, according to medical reports.
In one recent case, a 12-year-old boy developed a sponge-patterned skin discoloration on his left thigh after playing computer games a few hours every day for several months.
"He recognized that the laptop got hot on the left side; however, regardless of that, he did not change its position," Swiss researchers reported in an article published Monday in the journal
Pediatrics.
Another case involved a Virginia law student who sought treatment for the mottled discoloration on her leg.
Dr. Kimberley Salkey, who treated the young woman, was stumped until she learned the student spent about six hours a day working with her computer propped on her lap. The temperature underneath registered 125 degrees.
That case, from 2007, is one of 10 laptop-related cases reported in medical journals in the past six years.
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