What it means for a patient
- Painful red-to-purple skin patches with fever after a face lift can come from a rare inflammatory condition.
- In this case it resolved with steroid medicine.
- Early, correct diagnosis can spare a patient unneeded operations.
- Limits: one case. It shows the condition can occur after a face lift, not how often.
Why this paper matters
It adds Sweet syndrome to the list of conditions to consider when inflamed skin appears after a face lift. It reports a favorable outcome with corticosteroids.
Overview
Sweet syndrome is a rare inflammatory disorder with fever, a raised white blood cell count, and painful red-to-purple skin plaques. The authors state it had never been described after aesthetic surgery. They report one case to show why early diagnosis matters.
Findings
- One patient: a 60-year-old woman.
- Surgery: cervicofacial rhytidectomy combined with blepharoplasty and lower eyelid lipofilling.
- She developed Sweet syndrome after surgery.
- Treatment with systemic corticosteroids led to a favorable outcome.
- The authors state this is the first description of Sweet syndrome in aesthetic surgery.
- Early diagnosis avoids unnecessary surgical procedures.
- The abstract does not give the timing of onset or length of follow-up.
Terms
- Sweet syndrome: a rare inflammatory disorder with fever, high white blood cell count and painful skin plaques.
- Leukocytosis: a raised white blood cell count in the blood.
- Erythematous-violaceous plaques: raised patches of skin that are red to purple.
- Neutrophilic dermal infiltrate: a build-up of neutrophils, a type of white blood cell, in the skin.
- Cervicofacial rhytidectomy: a face and neck lift.
- Lipofilling: injecting a person's own fat to add volume.
- Systemic corticosteroids: steroid medicine taken by mouth or vein that reduces inflammation throughout the body.