Table 1.

classification of patients with erythroderma by cause in some previous publications and in the present series.

	Relative incidence,(%)
Causes	Sigurdsson et al14, 1996	Pal and Haroon7,1998	Nicolis and Helwig15, 1973	Hasan and jansan2, 1983	Botellaestrada et al1, 1994	Sehgal and strivastava12,1986	King et al13, 1986	The present series 2004
Preexisting dermatoses	53	74.4	25	42	62.5	52.5	30	57.9
Drug reacions	5	5.5	42	22	16	24.7	34	21.6
malignancies	13	5.5	21	4	12.5	0	20	11.3
Idiopathic	26	14.6	12	32	9	22.5	16	7.2