Cetrimide burn in an infant.

The patient's sister had left hospital a few months earlier after sustaining a scald to the scalp which had required skin grafting. A proprietary shampoo had been recommended by a local shopkeeper to keep the scalp clean. One evening, another of the patient's siblings, her 7-year-old brother, rubbed some of this shampoo in during a nappy change. The patient was unsettled overnight, and presented the following morning with the lesions shown in Fig. 1. The lesions were treated with silver sulphadiazine cream and healed within 7 days (Fig. 2). Subsequent investigations showed that the 'shampoo' was 17t% cetrimide solution (Cetavlon).