• Print ISSN: 2395 - 1400, Online ISSN: 2455 - 8923

IMAGES IN CLINICAL MEDICINE

Erythema Ab Igne

*Avinash Kumar Gupta1, *Boudhayan Das Munshi2, Vivek Podder3, Arup Kumar Kundu4

1Independent Researcher,2Consultant, IQ City Medical College, Durgapur, West Bengal,3Independent Researcher, 4Professor, IQ City Medical College, Durgapur, West Bengal

*Corresponding Author
Boudhayan Das Munshi
Consultant,
IQ City Medical College,
Durgapur West Bengal,
Email: biddudm@gmail.com,
Contact no: 9432204540.

Figure 1: showing reticular lesions in the right leg.

Introduction

A 45 year man presented with pain in right leg and reticular lesion on skin on posterior side of right leg. He met with a road traffic accident 2 years back when he was a professional driver and having weakness in right hand since then. Twelve days back he went back on a driving job where he had to drive for 12 hours daily, and since then he had started feeling pain in right leg. As days passed, pain worsened so he used hot water balloon behind legs for some relief. With every passing day his situation became more painful so he ended up in hospital. Such reticular lesions are present in Livedo reticularis, cutis marmorata and erythema Ab Igne and in this case; it was

diagnosed as erythema Ab Igne (figure 1) which happens on prolonged exposure to any heat source as occurred in this case by hot water balloon. It is easy to miss the diagnosis and go for unnecessary tests while only avoiding exposure to heat source may be the only required intervention in such case.1 Some other common heat sources are hot water bottles, laptops, kangri, space heaters, electric heaters, heating blankets, heat pads, and occupational hazard to bakers and chefs. Squamous cell carcinoma of skin is the common complication which is called Kang cancer in China and Tibet, because of sleeping on beds of hot bricks. Kangri cancer in Kashmir and Kario cancer in Japan do occur because people keep kanger and kangri or burning material in any container beneath clothing.2

References
  1. Cleve Clin J Med. 2018 Feb;85(2):96-97. doi: 10.3949/ccjm.85a.17015. Erythema ab igne. Smith T1, Nambudiri VE2.
  2. Lancet. 1998 Feb 28;351(9103):677. Hot- water-bottle rash: not only a sign of chronic pancreatitis. Rudolph CM, Soyer HP, Wolf P, Kerl H.