The Rhodoid Nevus: A Proposed Term for a So Far Unnamed Capillary Malformation

illary malformation’ [1–7] . This term is incredibly broad and includes many vascular disorders such as nevus flammeus, nevus anemicus, angiokeratoma circumscriptum as well as nuchal or glabellar salmon patches [8] . As a consequence, the cutaneous lesions of CM-AVM have erroneously been called ‘nevi flammei’ [4] or ‘port-wine stains’ [1–4, 6] . For obvious reasons, the capillary malformation associated with CM-AVM syndrome should be identifiable by a separate name. Because the lesion is typically of a ‘pink to red’ color [1, 5, 7] , I propose the designation ‘rhodoid nevus’. In ancient Greek, ῥ ́ ( rhodoides ) means ‘rose-like’ or ‘rose-colored’. Accordingly, CM-AVM could also be called ‘rhodoid nevus syndrome’. The distinguishing criteria of rhodoid nevus ( fig. 1 ) are summarized in table 1 . Its color is lighter than that of nevus flammeus ( fig. 2 ). On the other hand, its hue is usually darker than that observed in nevus roseus ( fig. 3 ), a congenital skin lesion that is sometimes found to be associated with a macular nevus spilus, resulting in phacomatosis spilorosea [9–11] . Rhodoid nevi tend to be rather small and of round or oval shape [6, 7] , and they show a haphazard distribution [5, 7] . By contrast, both nevus flammeus and nevus roseus are archetypically arranged in a checkerboard pattern [9] . As another distinguishing feature, the rhodoid nevus is often surrounded by a nar