The name sounds like something from a children's book. Pott's puffy tumor is not a tumor at all, and the thing it actually describes is far less charming: the frontal bone of the skull being destroyed by infection, with a pocket of pus collecting between the bone and the tissue covering it.
A 13-year-old boy in Pakistan arrived at hospital having fallen 15 days earlier. He now had a headache, vomiting, and two days of swelling around his left eye and left forehead, with reddened skin and tenderness over the frontal sinus. The clinical question put to radiology was straightforward: rule out a fracture and a subdural hematoma.
