Diagnosis of sports-related dermatoses.

A wide variety of dermatoses are associated with participation in specific athletic activities. These dermatoses can result from mechanical injuries, exposure to environmental factors and infectious agents, contact dermatitis to sports equipment, and other factors. Proper diagnosis requires familiarity with their characteristic clinical presentations, which are sometimes bizarre and perplexing. For example, swimmers can develop greenish discoloration of the hair, caused by prolonged exposure to copper-based algicides in swimming pools. Tennis players may develop talon noir, which presents as a small black macule on the heel that resembles acrallentiginous melanoma, but is in fact caused by bleeding into the thick stratum corneum of the heel. Unless one recognizes these features and enquires about participation in specific sports, these disorders can be difficult to diagnose. In this article, we review clinical features of various dermatoses that have been associated with participation in specific sports.