A clinical variant of chancroid resembling granuloma inguinale.

Sixteen patients with nonsyphilitic genital ulcerations had the clinical features of granuloma inguinale. Biopsy specimens and Wright's-stained tissue crush preparations obtained from all patients failed to demonstrate Donovan bodies. Herpes simplex virus was absent in cultures obtained from 11 patients. However, when techniques for culturing Hemophilus ducreyi became available in the latter part of the study, this organism was isolated from seven of eight consecutively studied patients. The pathologic process, therefore, represents a variant of chancroid having the clinical features of granuloma inguinale. Without the widespread availability of culture techniques for isolating H ducreyi, diagnostic uncertainty between these two diseases may occur.