[Arsenical keratoses and carcinomas].

We report the case of a 70-year old man who presented the classical cutaneous signs of chronic arsenicism : palmo-plantar keratoses and lesions of Bowen's disease. Within a few months, the patient developed multiple large superficial basal cell carcinomas on the trunk and several invasive squamous cell carcinomas. A pulmonary cancer with cerebral metastases was also identified. The complications of chronic arsenicism are nowadays rarely encountered. The cutaneous changes should be recongized because they allow to reveal the etiology of some internal lesions. Indeed, the notion of past arsenicism is often missing in the patient records. The recognition of the cutaneous warning signs allows to focus on the overall cancer risk of these patients.