title: Children left unattended in parked vehicles: a focus on recent italian cases and a review of literature.
abstract: Every year a lot of children die from heat stroke and hyperthermia because they have been left unattended in closed automobiles. These fatalities have augmented slightly in the past decade, but they are a poor recognized type of vehicle injury and little research has been done to discover the circumstances surrounding the fatal event. Two factors make children more prone to hyperthermia than adults: children have a greater surface area body mass ratio than adults and their thermoregulation is less efficient than adults. A scientific explanation about how it can happen that a parent leaves his child unattended in the car could be related to the Working Memory (WM): stress increases interference from irrelevant information, impairing selective attention and WM and influencing behavior. In the last two years in Italy 16 cases of child hyperthermia due to abandonment in motor vehicle were identified. These findings suggest that educational programs and literature for parents regarding automobile safety should include information about the potential dangers of heat stress, in fact, as these events are mostly unintentional, legislative efforts may be vain.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Pediatrics, Catholic University of Sacred Heart, Rome, Italy. pferrara@rm.unicatt.it.
authors.forename: Pietro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ferrara
authors.forename: Flaminia
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Vena
authors.forename: Olga
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Caporale
authors.forename: Valentina
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Del Volgo
authors.forename: Pio
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Liberatore
authors.forename: Francesca
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Ianniello
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Chiaretti
authors.forename: Riccardo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Riccardi
mesh_terms: D017677:Age Distribution; D001336:Automobiles; D002423:Cause of Death; D002648:Child; D002649:Child Abuse / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D005334:Fever / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D018883:Heat Stroke / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D007223:Infant; D007558:Italy / Q000453:epidemiology; D008297:Male; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D018570:Risk Assessment; D017678:Sex Distribution; D015996:Survival Rate