[Stevens-Johnson syndrome: a review of 42 cases]

We retrospectively studied 42 patients hospitalized for Stevens-Johnson syndrome at the Veterans General Hospital-Taipei between 1979 and 1991. Twenty-seven patients were males and 15 females; the ages ranged from 7 months to 82 years old with a mean age 50. The most common precipitating factor was drugs among which diphenylhydantion was the leading offender followed by nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory agents and allopurinol. Sixteen cases might be etiologically associated with infection, including 13 with upper respiratory infection, one with acute hepatitis B, one with pulmonary tuberculosis, and one with fever of unknown origin that was suspected to be viral infection. Although mycoplasma infection was thought in the literature to be a common etiologic factor of Stevens-Johnson syndrome, it was scarcely found in our study. Four patients were not treated with systemic steroids but still recovered uneventfully. Systemic steroid as a whole was not proved to be necessary, but early large-dose steroid therapy might abbreviate the course of the disease. The mortality rate was 11.9% which differs unremarkably from the reported rate (5-15%). Two patients died of pneumonia with sepsis, one of hemorrhagic shock (bleeding of adenocarcinoma of stomach), one of aspiration pneumonia, and one of sepsis with disseminated intravascular coagulation, upper gastrointestinal bleeding, and hyperglycemic hyperosmolar nonketotic coma.