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A Dermatologic Journey
Children around the world know about Little Red Riding Hood’s famous journey to
Grandma’s house, but few know the real reason behind it.
For you see, Little Red Riding Hood was a sickly child, afflicted in particular with
skin problems. In fact, her parent’s can’t remember a single day in her life where
there wasn’t some type of rash or lesion on their poor daughter.
But as luck would have it, one day she awoke with completely clear skin (‘cause that
kind of thing happens in Fairy Tale Land). Her parents, normally afraid that their
Little Red Riding Hood may transmit something to sickly Grandma laying in bed,
immediately took this opportunity to send Little Red Riding Hood on a journey to
Grandma’s House...
This is the story of that journey.
Hopefully by the end you will be more familiar with problems of the skin, and
be able to:
• Identify the most common morphological presentations of skin lesion.
• Be able to fully describe any skin lesions based on:
• Shape,
• Arrangement,
• Color,
• Distribution and
• Morphology.
1. Shape
Before she could leave, Little Red Riding Hood had to put her toys away. Her favourite
was a block matching game from which she learned the shapes and arrangements
that her skin lesions could take:
2. Arrangement
Linear Serpiginous
Discoid/Nummular Annular Targetoid
Grouped/Clustered
3. Distribution
After her toys were neatly away, Little Red Riding Hood’s parents inspected her one
last time from head to toe for any signs of skin problems. They knew that certain skin
conditions follow specific distributions on the body, for example:
Acne Vulgaris
Atopic Dermatitis
Photosensitive Eruptions
Psoriasis
4: Color
With perfectly clear skin, Little Red Riding Hood was ready to leave and went to pick up
her cloak. She wore cloaks because they covered most of her body, and hid her skin
lesions from view.
There were many different color options, because skin lesions can take on many
different colors. Any given day Little Red Riding Hood would pick the one that would
hide most of her lesions best.
So little Riding Hood left her home, and the great expanse of
varied land she had to cross on the way to Grandma’s house
came into view. Undaunted, she set out on her way...
First she came to a vast flat grassland, as flat and smooth as a clear path
of skin. “What a beautiful field!” she exclaimed.
One was raised and flat on top just like the grasslands. A raised flat lesion on
the skin is what doctors called a plaque she thought.
Another was just like the first, except there seemed to be a lot more grass
growing over it, so much that some died and was flaking off. This looked to
her a lot like what doctors call a scale.
The third was an area of dried mud stuck onto the top of the normally
flat grassland. This reminded her of what doctors call a crust.
Plaque: Raised, flat palpable Scale: Thickened flake of Crust: Serum, blood
lesion greater than 0.5cm in stratum corneum (top layer exudate firmly attached
diameter of the skin), easily detached. to the skin. Occurs
Example: Pityriasis Rosea Example: Psoriasis when plasma exudes
through an eroded
epidermis. Not easily
detached
Example: Impetigo
Following the raised landscapes she saw a rough
jagged mountain arise from the surface of the land.
She noticed it was quite similar to her pores, when filled with dead skin
and immune cells.
The docs called would call it an open comedone, the kids who
sometimes poked fun at her called them blackheads.
If the volcano opening was closed off, covered with a thin layer of
earth she thought, it would be much like a closed comedone, or
whitehead.
Comedo: Blocked pilosebaceous duct.
This, she thought, looks exactly like the hives, or wheals as the doctors
called them, that present in this way on her skin when she has an allergy.
Wheal: Raised areas of dermal oedema.
Example: Urticaria (hives)
After the earth stopped moving, Red Riding Hood walked on. She was happy to see
smooth grasslands once again, but noticed that in some places the grass and soil was
either thin, completely gone, and even as deep as the bedrock in one place.
With the
The thinning The deeper
earth
areas were areas of
completely
like: eroded earth:
gone:
Patch Macule
Keratosis Comedone Wheal
1. Shape 4. Distribution
2. Arrangement 5. Morphology
3. Color
For example:
One day after playing in the woods by her house, Little
Red Riding Hood came home with painful red circular
vesicles in a linear arrangement on her distal left
forearm.
What did she have? A reaction to poison ivy
Coming to the end of the journey with Little Red Riding Hood, let’s see if you can
apply the knowledge learned while on this trip by answering a couple of practice
questions:
Try to identify the following skin conditions. They’re tough, require a little prior knowledge
and are meant more than anything to illustrate the central importance of accurate and
detailed lesion description in diagnosis of dermatological problems:
Question 1:
You are rounding in a nursing home and encounter this
71 year old gentleman. He suffered from malaise,
headache and fever before the eruption. He also
seems to remember a tingling sensation in the area.
He is currently distressed and worries that it is "some
sort of cancer". What is the likely pathogen?
A: Varicella Zoster Virus (VZV)
B: Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV)
C: Measles Virus
D: Human Papillomavirus (HPV)
Question 2:
On a family medicine rotation, you see a 9 year old A: molluscum contagiosum
boy with numerous small vesicular lesions on B: chickenpox
erythematous bases. The lesions are all in different C: impetigo
stages of evolution and appear over the trunk and D: erysipelas
face. The most likely diagnosis is:
The End
Credits:
Special thanks to Sheila Pinchin from the Office of Health Sciences Education and Amy
Allcock from MEdTech for their invaluable help in putting this module together.
Practice Questions courtesy of Nicole Hawkins from Queen’s Meds 2009. Many more
helpful resources and questions available at DermStudent.com