A 73-year-old woman has been coughing for the past year and has lost 5 kilograms in just 4 months. She admits that she has 30 years of smoking and at least one packet a day.
However, it wasn’t the symptoms mentioned above that prompted her to go to the doctor, but the strange texture on her palms, as well as pain and itching.
The doctor wrote in the case report: “A physical examination revealed that her palms were soft, the ridges of her fingertips and palm skin were obvious, and the folds were obvious.”
Due to its resemblance to the striated appearance of the stomach wall of a cow, pig or sheep, this rare medical condition is called a “belly-like palm”. It is also sometimes called palm echinoderm, and belongs to the category of skin diseases, in which the skin is abnormally dark (such as echinoderma) or thickened (such as palmar plantar keratosis) due to hyperpigmentation.
Velvet lines do not always cause itching or pain. Although the exact cause of skin variability is unknown, a study showed that clear spine lines are usually associated with some type of internal malignancy, with cancer in more than 90% of cases.
Most commonly, the palm of the pig and other skin abnormalities occur simultaneously with lung or gastric cancer. After a CT scan, the 73-year-old patient from Sao Paulo, Brazil, had irregular shadows on the right side of his lungs.
A subsequent biopsy confirmed that it was adenocarcinoma; the patient underwent chemotherapy and radiation therapy.
There is no known cure for the mutation on the palm, but doctors explain that sometimes, curing all the diseases that cause it may cause skin symptoms to disappear, although this is not always the case.
The doctor pointed out: “Treatment of cancer relieves the palm of the belly, but the patient’s skin condition has not subsided due to chemotherapy.”
More importantly, six months after the appointment, doctors found that cancer cells had spread and needed a second round of chemotherapy.
It is not known what the results will be, but this experience shows that we should take the unknown skin lesions of the hands seriously.
In 1989, scientists observed: “40% of patients with a tripe-like palm have no indication of a malignant tumor before-but have been diagnosed. Therefore, all patients with palm metamorphosis should be treated. Comprehensive diagnostic tests to rule out the possibility of malignant tumors, especially lung and gastric cancer.
