Blanched Legs

[Guest marcydf]

I need a little of your help.

We have a term newborn in our NICU in which we observed a particular skin reaction on both legs: it begins as a cutis marmorata and ends with blanching of the skin with appearence of "orange skin/goosebump skin". It lasts more or less 10 seconds. Initially we suspected an early onset infection (the baby initially was moderately tachypnoic) but all tests were negative. The newborn now is going well: he's breastfeeded and he's growing up, but we're seeing this reaction frequently in the baby. I think it's an exaggerated "Cutis marmorata" pnenomenon, but the blanching reaction is very important (the skin appears "excavated" with little grooves that disappear after 5-10 seconds).

What do you thinh about?

[Stefan Johansson]

So, the baby is completely well and has a normal skin color inbetween those episodes?

Would be great to see photographs (given permission from parents)?

Maybe this could be a Harlequin-like episode, (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4502618/)

[Guest marcydf]

Thank you, here is a picture. It's a little out of focus but it's possible to see the colour and the particular look of the skin. The phenomenon interests also the opposite leg and, less, superior limbs. We think it's a benign (but impressive!!) vasomotory response (benign because was less frequent day after day and now it's disappeared).

Sorry, I told you an wrong information: he's a late preterm (36 +3)

Marcello De Filippo

II level NICU Grosseto (Italy)