[Reestablishment of the clinical diagnosis in vascular acrosyndromes]

Raynaud's phenomenon (RP) is very frequent with a prevalence of 4% in a general population. Its evaluation has to be simple noninvasive and cheap. The only difficulty is to differentiate early primary RP from secondary RP that may evolve principally to a connective tissue disorder. Two questions have to be solved 1--Is it a primary or a secondary RP? 2--In case of secondary RP how to obtain a more precise diagnosis? Clinical examination alone is able to give a response for question 1 with 76% of reliability. Information has to be collected about sex, age at onset, occupation, uni or bilaterality of the disability, thumb involvement and drug consumption. Physician has to examine skin carefully, pulses, arterial bruits, heart, lungs, the time of return of color of digits after squeezing the blood out of the hand by clenching with and without compression of the radial and/or the cubital artery. Inquiries should be made about visceral involvement: oesophageal dysfunction, dyspnea, sicca syndrome, thyroiditis or polyneuritis that rule out a primary form of Raynaud's phenomenon.