Erythema multiforme. Clinical characteristics and natural history in fifty patients.

Erythema multiforme is a chronic mucocutaneous inflammatory disease with a variable recurrent pattern. Thirty female and twenty male patients, ranging in age from 11 to 75 years, were studied. Twelve patients had oral lesions only, nineteen had oral and lip changes, and nineteen had oral, lip, and skin involvements. Most of the patients had a noncyclical pattern of attacks which required systemic corticosteroid therapy. When the disease attacks electively were not treated, healing would vary between 2 and 24 weeks. This study confirmed the idiopathic nature and extremely variable features of erythema multiforme. Frequency, location, duration, and severity of attacks did not shed any clues as to trigger mechanisms (etiology), persons who might be predisposed to such attacks, treatment responses, or prognosis.