[Digestive manifestations during systemic scleroderma]

A 3 years' study was performed on a group of 32 patients with systemic scleroderma. 23 of them had digestive manifestations involving the whole digestive tract. The diagnosis was based on the clinical, radiological, echographic, endoscopic and anatomopathological examinations. In the prolonged forms of the disease, successive associations appeared in various segments of the digestive tract, the esophageal one being always the first. In all cases, the digestive manifestations followed the cutaneous involvement and were constantly correlated to Raynaud's syndrome presence. Digestive manifestations did not influence the prognosis of the substrate disease.