Treatment of toxic epidermal necrolysis with intravenous immunoglobulin

Toxic epidermal necrolysis is a severe adverse drug reaction that produces extensive mucocutaneous damage, with full-thickness epidermal detachment, and has many clinical similarities to severe burn injuries. The treatment is mainly supportive and aimed at preventing complications while the disease takes its natural course, and the skin reepithelializes. Much interest exists in the development of a specific therapy targeted at the disease process itself. Because the diagnosis has an incidence of only 0.5-1 case/million/year, large controlled studies are lacking, but a recent, better understanding of this disease has provided the rationale for the use of intravenous immunoglobulin. We present a case of toxic epidermal necrolysis that showed a good response to intravenous immunoglobulin G and review the recent literature condition and its management.