Adolescents may not be willing to give a true history in the presence of their parents. A 13 year old boy was brought by his mother to an accident and emergency department in London with facial lesions that he claimed were due to a fall (

). It wasn’t until his mother left the room (and after x rays had shown the diagnosis) that he admitted having been shot in the face with an altered blank bullet while playing with friends. As his symptoms settled and blood lead levels did not rise it was decided to leave the bullet where it was, near the coronoid process of the left mandible.

A large international study with data provided by almost 19000 people aged 20–44 years has given more evidence of the long-term effects of passive smoking in childhood (

). Men, but not women, exposed in childhood to parental smoking had more respiratory symptoms and poorer lung function as adults. Women, however, seemed to suffer more than men from the long term effects of maternal smoking in pregnancy.

Homozygous factor V Leiden mutation may lead to severe Perthes’ disease. In Debrecen, Hungary (

) five of 47 patients with Perthes’ disease had Factor V Leiden mutation, four homozygous …