Woman’s ‘velvety palms’ ended up being symptom of cancer

When a patient, 73, visited a dermatology clinic amid painful lesions on her hands, it was just one of many signals that all was not right with this woman's poor health.

The patient contacted a local dermatological clinic complaining of itchy and painful lesions on both hands. The natural folds and furrows on her palms, as the doctors noted, were very pronounced, but on the whole the palms made an impression of being “velvet”. The patient’s skin problems, she said, appeared nine months before going to the doctor, Science Alert reported. 

"Physical examination revealed sharp demarcation of the folds in the lines of her hands in addition to a velvety appearance of palmar surfaces and ridging of the skin," her doctors write in a case report.

The patient underwent computed tomography of the chest and abdomen, and the diagnosis was confirmed: she really had lung cancer. She was prescribed a combination of chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

Keratoderma can occur after treatment, but in this case, neither the treatment of lung cancer, nor the topical use of ointments helped.

Photo: The New England Journal of Medicine

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