Blue Rubber Bleb Nevus

The descriptive designation, "blue rubber bleb nevus," was applied to the following case because it satisfied the criteria of multiple, wide-lumened hemangiomas of the skin and gastrointestinal tract, as enumerated by William Bean. A relationship between hemangiomas of the skin and hemangiomas of the internal organs is said to have been first described in 1860 by Gascoyan,¹ but did not receive much clinical attention until the next century. Bean, in his comprehensive text,² recorded a typical case of such an association describing the unique features and naming the complex "blue rubber bleb nevi" of the skin and gastrointestinal tract. Since that time only three case reports^3-5 have appeared under this title, two of them in the dermatological literature. In one of these examples ³ the lesions were characteristic but examination failed to disclose any internal lesions. Berlyne ⁴ demonstrated a mode of inheritance resembling a mendelian dominant