Background: Chronic leg ulcers (CLU) are a commun and major cause of morbidity. For this reason, we systematically perform autologous skin grafting. Objective: Long-term evaluation of this treatment. Patients and Methods: Among the 521 out-patients or those hospitalized for CLU between 1981 and 1993, we assessed 188 (118 women, 70 men, mean age 74 years, 144 grafts, 44 non-grafted). Results: For the grafted CLU, there were 46 failures (17.5%), 152 (58%) healed in a mean time of 2.2 months and 64 relapsed (24.5%). For the non-grafted CLU, 3 did not heal (3%), 20 relapsed (22.5%) and 66 healed (74.5%) in a mean time of 4.7 months. All the patients who suffered from painful CLU mentioned a regression of pain after the graft. Finally, 87.5% of patients declared that they would accept a new graft. Conclusions: We did not note any real difference in closure and recurrence rates between grafted and non-grafted ulcers. This is most likely due to an important selection bias related to the methodology of our study. The grafted ulcers were more serious: they were larger (28.9 against 7.9 cm²) and older (11.1 against 5.6 months).

Over a 12-year period (1979–1991), 29 cases of Sweet’s syndrome (SS) were detected in the area of Geneva; 24 patients (82%) could be contacted for follow-up. The majority of SS occurred between 1979 and 1986, then from 1991 on. The annual distribution and especially the absence of cases during 4 years suggest an environmental or even infectious factor in SS. Only 4 cases had an underlying disease (ulcerative colitis, polycythemia, lymphoma, sarcoidosis) whereas in the other, a long-term follow-up, including iterative hematological evaluation, did not reveal any underlying condition. Twelve patients were treated by colchicine, 9 by potassium iodide and 5 by prednisone; in 3 patients remission was spontaneous. Nine patients (28%) relapsed; there was no relationship between the type of drugs used and the frequency of relapses.

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