Local and Systemic Nail Plate Abnormalities: A Clinical Review

Nail disorders are often difficult to recognize and diagnose because of the subtlety of their presentation and their shared overlapping features that are common to several conditions. Experientially, this is further complicated by the fact that specific training on diagnosis of nail pathologies varies substantially across most residency programs and for a majority of medical and surgical specialties. To distinguish these presentations from true, potentially deleterious nail disorders, clinicians should have familiarity with the most commonly occurring nail pathologies and their associations, and use a systematic approach when examining or evaluating alterations in the nails. In the present study, we review the most common clinical disorders affecting the nail apparatus.