Macrodystrophia lipomatosa: macrodactyly related to affected nerves, and a review of the literature.

Macrodystrophia lipomatosa (ML) is a rare disease causing congenital local gigantism of part of an extremity mostly through proliferation of fibro-adipose tissue. This study is one of few that specifically describe 8 ML patients with histological confirmation of the diagnosis combined with the 79 histologically confirmed cases already described in the literature. The goals of this study are to describe this malformation by using only histologically confirmed cases, to offer some insight on current opinions on ML by reviewing the histologically confirmed cases described in the literature, and to make the postulation of autonomic nerve dysfunction as the aetiology of ML more plausible.