For decades, every year sees a wide number of articles about treatment of ingrown toenails. There is still a debate about the cause of this painful condition. Surgical treatments rely on two main approaches: either narrowing the nail plate or debulking the soft tissues. It is up to the surgeon to select the most appropriate approach in each case. All procedures cited in this article have high cure rates as long as they are properly performed. As with all surgical procedures, they are operator dependent. Chemical cautery is the easiest and most versatile technique that may help in almost all instances for lateral ingrowing. For distal embedding and very hypertrophic and exuberant lateral folds, debulking with secondary intention healing is the most effective and easy to perform, with great results.
1 July 2013 in Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology
Chronic urticaria (CU) is a chronic inflammatory mast cell‐driven disorder. Endothelial cells (ECs) contribute importantly to key features of CU. Several markers of EC (dys)function in CU have been reported, but have not yet been systematically reviewed. In this study, we systematically reviewed and categorized all published markers of EC functions in CU through a comprehensive search in Pubmed, The Cochrane Library, Web of Science, and SCOPUS using the following Mesh terms: CU AND pathogenesis AND (vasculopathy OR microangiopathy OR ECs OR marker). In total, 79 articles were selected and the identified biomarkers were categorized according to EC (dys)function in CU. The most frequent and consistently reported upregulated biomarkers in CU skin were adhesion molecules, TF, and P‐selectin. The most frequently reported upregulated and reliable biomarkers in sera of CU patients were F1+2 for coagulation cascade involvement, D‐dimers for fibrinolysis, and MMP‐9 for vascular permeability. Emerging biomarkers described in the selected articles were endostatin, heat shock proteins, cleaved high molecular weight kininogen, and adipokines. This systematic review contributes to the pool of growing evidence for vascular involvement in CU where EC dysfunction is present in different aspects of cell survival, maintenance of vascular structure, and coagulation/fibrinolysis balance.
11 March 2013 in Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology