[Eosinophilic fasciitis and related diseases]

The eosinophilic fasciitis (EF) is characterized clinically by cutaneous swelling (in the initial phases) and fibrosis (in advanced phases) that affects predominantly to the extremities. Differences with scleroderma are, among other, that it affects from a primary way to the fascia and the subcutaneous fat tissue instead to the dermis, and its response to the corticoids. In most instances its causes are ignored (then we could denominate it Shulman's disease), but in a non negligible percentage of cases it can have a toxic origin, and, more rarely, to be a paraneoplastic syndrome. Other disorders with diverse etiologies can cause cutaneous lesions clinical and histologically indistinguishable from EF; the group of all these diseases would constitute the fasciitis-panniculitis syndrome, from Shulman's disease would be an idiopathic form.