ACROSCLEROSIS

Abstract

The syndrome acrosclerosis combines the features of Raynaud's phenomena with a characteristic scleroderma of the distal parts of the extremities and of the face and neck. Apparently there is much confusion among dermatologists regarding the clinical nature of acrosclerosis and its differentiation from diffuse scleroderma as well as from other forms of sclerodactylia and even from Raynaud's disease. To clarify some of the diagnostic and prognostic essentials of acrosclerosis is the purpose of this paper. Historically it may be pointed out that Raynaud himself identified the association of acral cutaneous sclerosis with the vasomotor symptoms which bear his name.¹ During the years that followed other authors perceived the same relation. Appolinario,² it is recorded, early insisted that the combination of scleroderma and local asphyxia of the extremities indicated not the presence of two superposed diseases but a complex form of a single disease. A half-century ago Hutchinson³