SUPERFICIAL EPITHELIOMATOSIS

Abstract

Superficial epitheliomatosis was first clearly described by Little 1 in 1923. However, Wise 2 has stated that prior to that time it was recognized as multiple benign superficial flat epithelioma. Since the original description, great confusion has arisen as to both its clinical features and its histopathologic characteristics. In the case to be reported the patient was a young man whose eruption had existed for ten years, and the case illustrates the difficulty in making the proper diagnosis. Savatard, 3 in a survey of the literature for the past sixty years, has concluded that because of the protean clinical and histologic manifestations variants of the same eruption have been described as separate diseases. For example, he maintained that mammary and extramammary Paget's disease of the skin, Queyrat's erythroplasia and Bowen's precancerous dermatosis are different forms of the same disease. In Savatard's experience these lesions resembled