SCLERODERMA HEART DISEASE

Abstract

It is the purpose of this paper to call attention to the involvement of organs other than the skin in the course of scleroderma and to discuss particularly the clinical and the pathologic changes resulting from myocardial lesions associated with this condition. The physician frequently encounters patients with heart disease which does not fit into any of the various categories usually listed in textbooks of medicine.¹ Unless particular attention is paid to the establishment of the etiologic factors underlying the condition one is likely to miss the significance of certain rarer forms of generalized disease which may lead to myocardial failure. It is easier to conclude that a given patient suffers from an unusual manifestation of arteriosclerotic, hypertensive, rheumatic, syphilitic or congenital heart disease than it is to establish the association of myocardial changes with some less familiar condition which may affect the heart. One of these less familiar