SYSTEMIC RETICULOENDOTHELIAL GRANULOMA

Abstract

SYSTEMIC reticuloendothelial granuloma is the generic term used by Wallgren¹ in 1940 to include Letterer-Siwe disease and Schüller-Christian disease. During the past two decades there have been numerous articles devoted to this subject, largely by pathologists, pediatrists, internists and orthopedists. Dermatologists, however, have apparently paid little attention to the cutaneous manifestations of systemic reticuloendothelial granuloma, judging from the paucity of articles which have appeared in dermatologic journals. In articles written within the past few years, Farber,² Mallory³ and Jaffe and Lichtenstein⁴ also included eosinophilic granuloma of bone in the group of systemic reticuloendothelial granulomas. The following classification was proposed by Mallory:³ The disease may mainfest itself in infancy or early childhood in a rapidly fatal form in which the lesions are widely distributed both through the soft tissues (especially the lymphoid tissues) and the skeleton (so-called Letterer-Siwe disease, reticulosis or nonlipid histiocytosis). It