Arthritis Health Center

Understanding Scleroderma -- Symptoms

What Are the Symptoms of Scleroderma?

The symptoms of scleroderma vary from person to person. The most common symptom is tightening, hardening, or thickening of the skin on the fingers, arms, legs, hands, feet, and face. The skin continues to thicken during the first two to three years of the disease. Thickening usually stops and may even improve.

Symptoms of scleroderma may also include:

• Swelling, stiffness, or pain in the fingers, toes, hands, feet, or face
• Puffiness of the skin
• Skin discoloration
• Sensitivity to cold and a whitening of one or more fingers that may come and go, often associated with pain in the affected fingers (called Raynaud's phenomenon)
• Red spots on the fingers, palms, face, lips, or tongue, from permanently dilated tiny blood vessels (called telangiectasias)
• Ulcers or sores on fingertips, knuckles, or elbows
• Fatigue
• Digestive problems such as heartburn, trouble swallowing, or slow movement of food in the intestines
• Loss of hand use because of skin tightening on fingers and hands
• Shortness of breath, resulting from heart or lung damage

Limited Scleroderma (CREST syndrome)

Five symptoms that may occur together have been recognized as a variation of the disease, called limited scleroderma or CREST syndrome. CREST stands for:

• Calcinosis (painful calcium deposits in the skin)
• Raynaud's phenomenon (abnormal blood flow in the hands and feet in response to cold or stress)
• Esophageal dysfunction (problems with swallowing caused by scarring in the esophagus)
• Sclerodactyly (tightening of the skin on the fingers or toes)
• Telangiectasias (red spots on the hands, palms, forearms, face, and lips)

Call Your Doctor About Scleroderma If:

• You notice tightening, thickening, or hardening of your skin.
• You have unexplained swelling of the fingers, toes, hands, feet, or face.
• You develop unusual sensitivity to cold in your hands and feet.
• You develop red spots on your fingers, palms, face, or lips.
• You get ulcers or sores on your fingertips, knuckles, or elbows.