Atrophy senile of the skin L90.8

Atrophy of the skin in older people due to endogenous (intrinsic) and external (extrinsic) influences.

Basically the aging process of the skin can be divided into:

• intrinsic aging, the natural, physiological aging process that begins after the 4th year of life as simple atrophy of all skin layers and is mainly influenced by genetic factors.
• extrinsic aging (UV damage to the skin/photoaging, smoking, alcohol, stress, other environmental noxae)

The extrinsic aging process will be observed exclusively on the skin areas that are preferably exposed to sunlight (face; neck, nape of neck, décolleté, forearms, back of hands, lower legs).

Yellowish or grayish-yellowish, but also pied hyperpigmented by chronic actinic influences, flabby, usually dry, withered, parchment-like skin, often interspersed with telangiectasia (especially in the face and thorax) and with distinct protrusion of the larger venous and arterial vessels lying under the skin (as in an anatomical preparation), with increased wrinkle and furrow formation. Subdivision of the skin into coarse rhombic fields. Often leukomelanodermic pigment shifts, reduced sebum and sweat gland activity with marked exsiccosis of the skin. Hair and nails change structurally as well as in their growth. The subcutaneous fatty tissue changes structurally, resulting in irregularities in the surface of the skin/fat tissue compartment.

The following changes are observed in the senile involution of skin, skin appendages and subcutis:

• decrease of the skin turgor
• Structural changes of the subcutaneous fat tissue with change of the skin topography
• Pruritus senilis (itching due to dryness of the integument)
• Desiccation eczema
• Sebostasis (reduction of the function of the sebaceous glands)
• Actinic elastosis (combination effect - intrinsic+extrinsic involution)
• Cutis laxa syndrome
• Blepharochalasis
• Atrophy of the lip skin and red of the lips
• Elastoidosis cutanea nodularis et cystica (severe circumscribed actinic elastosis with loss of skin elasticity and comedone formation)
• Cutis rhomboidalis nuchae (maximum reaction of the neck skin by intrinsic+extrinsic involution)
• purpura senilis
• lentigo solaris
• Poikiloderma due to hyper and depigmentation in the extrinsic aging process.
• Growth retardation and structural changes of skin and hair

Acrodermatitis chronica atrophicans; Progeria adultorum;