Osteopoikilosis: what does the rheumatologist must know about it?

Osteopoikilosis (OPK) is a rare, benign, and asymptomatic bone dysplasia that is developed during childhood and persists throughout life. This condition is generally found incidentally on plain radiographies made by other reasons. The main differential diagnosis is osteoblastic metastasis. So, OPK must be in differential diagnosis when bone lesions are identified on plain radiograph to avoid alarming the patient with more serious disease and misdiagnosis. In this paper, we review the clinical manifestation, pathophysiology, diagnosis, and treatment of OPK.

[A case of osteopoikilosis combined with dermal changes and compression syndromes of peripheral nerves]. / Ein Fall von Osteopoikilie kombiniert mit dermalen Veränderungen und Kompressionssyndromen peripherer Nerven.

In the case of combination of osteopoikilosis with dermal alterations we wanted to know if the hereby discussed general mesenchymal lesions are the cause of the additional entrapment syndromes of peripheral nerves present in our case. For this purpose we recorded the pressure at the distal median and ulnar nerves within and out of the entrapment location. The results of the pressure recording of not point to a primary nerve lesion by a elevated pressure susceptibility or a pressure elevation at the peripheral nerve out of a defined entrapment location e.g. by an increase of connective tissue. Because of a hypertrophic scar formation in this case it should be paid attention to the wound healing of all patients with osteopoikilosis. The histologically verified nevoid mesenchymal alterations of the connective tissue found in this case, are to be delineated from the disseminated lenticular dermatofibrosis of the Buschke-Ollendorff syndrome.