PREFACE

Learning to read by looking at pictures is the starting point for children to learn words. Similarly, for most dermatologists and me,learning about skin diseases through pictures is the path we have taken, from the emotional to the rational. After accumulating a certain amount of experience, I particularly wanted to have a rare, uncommon, and unusual skin disease atlas to quickly improve my diagnostic level. I was disappointed that I was unable to achieve this goal. In 2005, in order to cultivate graduate students and young doctors, we launched the compilation of Rare, Uncommon, Unusual, and Difficult Skin Disease Atlas, but during the implementation, we found that the accumulation at that time was far from reaching this goal, so we had to wait. After completing the Practical Dermatopathology book in 2018, I silently prepared, but later paused due to other work including writing the book Vitiligo. After repeated thinking and searching for pictures, in September 2021, I officially announced the launch of the work to all the doctors in our department, and invited doctors who had time and energy to actively sign up to participate.

The original goal of the book was to target middle and high-level medical professionals, but at the preparatory meeting, the editors believed that it was necessary to add one typical case for each common disease, so that even beginners can learn from it. Young doctors can quickly master difficult, rare, and atypical skin diseases after typical cases, accelerating the growth process.

The arrangement and classification of the table of contents is the soul of a book. The main table of contents of this book is arranged according to the location of the disease, separating the rare from common atypical skin diseases. And each part is arranged in the order of macules, nodules, papules, plaques, which is conducive to the reader looking up unknown diseases in clinical work. For some diseases with particularly large clinical morphological variations, we have specially listed Chapter 8, and selected 10 major categories of these diseases, with more cases selected for systematic learning. In addition, we have listed the age of onset index and the special lesions pattern index, which have been changed into appendices because the diseases listed in them are beyond the diseases in this book. We believe that these appendices and indexes will provide great convenience for readers.

The book contains a large number of difficult cases, which are selected from clinical diagnostic errors, and are corrected by pathological, laboratory, and various examinations. These rare, uncommon, and atypical skin diseases are difficult for attending physicians and junior associate chief physician. The selection of images is carried out by experienced senior physician, and repeatedly reviewed by multiple chief editors. Drafted by young doctors, the manuscript was then reviewed by the deputy editors, chief editors, and main reviewers, so the book finally needed a large team of chief editors, deputy editors, and main reviewers. The final version of this book is the result of the efforts of at least 10 people for each case, thus the author contributions are reflected in the authors’ order according to the quantity and quality of their work.

The pictures in this book are mainly selected from the department’s digital photos taken since 2005, basically not from early digital photos with low pixels and the accumulated film photos, with a total of more than a million. Some cases that do not need pathology are mainly selected from photos of inpatient patients and outpatient photos accumulated by each doctor.

The section on hair diseases is specially written and provided all the pictures by Professor YANG Shuxia from Peking University First Hospital; the section on leprosy is specially reviewed and provided with many pictures by Professor YANG Xichuan from the Southwest Hospital of AMU; the section on syphilis is specially revised and supplemented with cases by Professor WANG Xiuli from Shanghai Skin Disease Hospital. Here, we express our sincere gratitude to all colleagues who have made contributions to this book!

Despite the fact that the selected pictures are selected and reviewed by the team, there may still be misdiagnosis, misjudgment or description is inaccurate due to the cognitive level of an independent unit. We sincerely hope that readers will correct them.

GAO Tianwen

January 2023