A 27 years old young healthy male reported to the skin OPD with complaints of white patches over his arms and thighs since 8 months. On examination the spots were flat white spots & were numerous and distributed over the arms and legs most of them measuring less than a cm in diameter. the spots were quite subtle almost playing hide and seek looking prominent at sometime and then not so obvious at other times It didn’t fit in clinically with the most common skin issues of similar look ie fungus, allergy, sun sensitivity etc. Routine blood tests Complete blood counts , liver , kidney function tests, thyroid , blood sugars were within normal limits and gave no further insight whatsoever The patient had visited couple of doctors who just like us couldn’t really come to a final diagnosis and he was treated as a case of fungus, allergy white patches with no improvement at all; the case was turning to be most eluding yet teasing,it was like the spots were taunting us having a secret laugh at our ignorance. With nothing more to offer to the patient we admitted to the patient yes even though we are supposed to be specialists we had no clue as to what we were dealing with and we thought let us sleep over this and rake our brains at a later date
Thankfully the patient was patient and persistent, and he had more trust in our abilities to help him than what we had frankly and were all about to throw our hands in the air when we noticed that his arms appeared slightly red kinda flushed. So we had a new clue and we started to prod deeper into that and the patient revealed that the redness is very much there on and off but it doesn’t bother him like pain or itch so he choose not to discuss that We then started a cross reference transient redness, flushing we dug into our books and online research ( Dr Google ) threw up a picture akin to our patients condition and we had the diagnosis it was BIER spots, a rare entity but nevertheless reported and published.
So this is how it goes when the patient raises his hands as shown in image 1 they disappear and when the patient puts his arms down the blood gushes down, the flush increase and the white spots reappear magically shining like stars in a dark moonless night (image 2).
In the image 3 we can see both the arms the right is red and beefy and left pale as it had been just raised for a few seconds a moment ago which had emptied the veins ; the contrast is startling and was staring in our face Like a kid who has been give a free access to a video game parlor we were grinning and asking the patient to raise one arm and then the other and get them down and so on, even he was mesmerized to see the changes in his body happening with a bit of help from gravity The white patches would crop up the moment his arms were hanging
down in the dependent position and disappear in a jiffy the moment he raised them and even though I’m considered a specialist in treating vitiligo ( White Patches ) I swear I have never seen any white patch getting cured at this speed. Medical literature dispels the mystery behind this phenomenon as abnormal Vascular response to venous hypertension and tissue hypoxia so if u see that’s what was happening But the thrill of making this rare diagnosis was a eureka moment for me and my colleague Dr Nupur, the sweet pleasure of arriving at a diagnosis was just divine . We literally patted each other on the back Good job and after a long slog in the OPD we raised a toast ( with tea In thermacol glasses) and exclaimed Elementary Dr Watson Elementary I know some of u must be wondering why I’m so excited to sit down and write a article about this simple condition but it’s something u really go to experience yourself , and in the end it’s the small pleasures that really count in this beautiful journey of life, for these are the drops that become the ocean, and is it not that the entire ocean is in the drop……
