Consultant for Pediatricians Vol 4 No 8

This 13-year-old boy has a Becker nevus--also called Becker melanosis, because the lesions do not contain nevus cells. This common lesion is characterized by the abrupt onset of hyperpigmentation that gradually expands; it appears at or before adolescence.

The parents of this 2-year-old boy brought their son for evaluation of swelling of the right leg and excoriation and serosanguineous discharge from the ankle region of 3 days' duration.The child had had a hemangioma of the right ankle since birth. Subsequently, there was gradual spread of the lesion along the leg to the buttocks.

"Jennifer is bleeding," confides Mrs Smith outside the door to her daughter's clinic room. "She's really embarrassed to discuss it with anyone but I'm really worried. Do you think that she is having sex?" You listen to her concerns and learn that Jennifer's last menstrual period has lasted approximately 3 to 4 weeks. Jennifer and her mother came to the pediatric clinic today after Mrs Smith found multiple menstrual pads in the bathroom wastebasket every day for several days.

In the Photoclinic item titled "Vaccine-Induced Herpes Zoster," by Julie L. Cantatore-Francis, MD, and Yelva Lynfield, MD (Consultant For Pediatricians, June 2005, pages 290 and 291), the dosage of acyclovir was incorrectly printed as 80 mg/d divided into 4 doses. The correct dosage is 80 mg/kg/d divided into 4 doses. We apologize for the error.

After spending a day at the beach, a 12-year-old boy presented with a second-degree sunburn and blisters on his shoulders (A). According to his mother, he had used sunscreen. The child was not taking any medications. Except for a significant number of moles, his skin was normal.

This 14-year-old girl had first noticed the well-circumscribed, roughened, irregular growth on her right middle finger 6 months earlier. The lesion had progressively enlarged. The girl's mother had a similar, but smaller, lesion on the left elbow. Alexander K. C. Leung, MD, and Justine H. S. Fong, MD, of Calgary, Alberta, diagnosed verruca vulgaris. This proliferative, hyperkeratotic, exophytic lesion is most commonly caused by human papillomavirus types 2 and 4.