Acral self-healing collodion baby: A case series

Collodion baby is a term used to describe a phenotype characterized by the presence of a tight, translucent membrane that covers the entire skin at birth. This membrane usually sheds around 10 to 14 days and reveals the underlying disease (mainly different types of Recessive Ichthyosis or other infrequent disorders). A rare variant of this phenotype is known as acral self-healing collodion baby whereby the patients are born with the typical membrane but limited to the hands and feet only, and after it sheds, the skin appears completely normal. We report five cases of this very rare subtype of collodion baby. All the patient cases that are presented involved both hands and feet. One of the patients also had the umbilicus embedded in a subtle collodion membrane. None of the patients had a family history of the same entity or any other type of ichthyosis. In all patients, the condition resolved spontaneously within a few weeks and no patients developed any other manifestation. Although no molecular analysis was performed, we contribute to the knowledge of the clinical features of this extremely uncommon and benign entity, since to the best of our knowledge there are only two previous reports available in literature.