Nails Involvement in Winiwarter-Buerger Disease

Buerger disease, or thromboangiitis obliterans, is an inflammatory and occlusive process involving small and medium size arteries and veins, which generally affects the lower limbs of young adult male with the habit of smoking.

This paper reports 2 patients who developed nail lesions as the first sign of Buerger disease.

Signs and symptoms of Buerger's disease are secondary to the inflammatory process and arterial occlusion which results in severe ischemia. Involvement of nails is not common, but we found 2 different clinical features which have not been previously reported in the literature: chronic paronychia, and proximal leukonychia or onycholysis and nail bed erosion.