The Sturge-Weber Syndrome

Alexander and Norman, from the University of Bristol, England, have brought together their remarkably extensive experience with the Sturge-Weber syndrome, one of the better known and recognized forms of congenital dysplastic angiectasis. This is a disease in which an angioma of the skin, not much different from the portwine birthmark so often found in the distribution of one or more branches of the trigeminal nerve, is associated with a vascular dysplasia affecting the subadjacent brain. The authors fail to relate the Sturge-Weber syndrome to the much broader group of similar anomalies of blood vessels in both the skin and underlying tissues. They use the eponym Sturge-Weber although pointing out quite clearly that many people before Weber and some before Sturge had given quite adequate descriptions of the syndrome. But this is the usual situation with eponyms, and even the eponym Sturge-Weber Syndrome seems less cumbersome than congenital dysplastic angiectasis, though