After repetitive strain injury and “texter’s thumb” researchers have identified a new skin disorder caused by excessive use of new technology — “PlayStation palm.”
Caused by over-enthusiastic handling of the “joypads” used to control gaming consoles, the condition causes painful sore patches on the palms of the hands.
Swiss doctors writing in the British Journal of Dermatology report having spotted the symptoms in an unnamed 12-year-old girl whose injuries had appeared over a period of four weeks.
A medical team at Geneva University Hospital diagnosed “idiopathic eccrine hidradenitis”–a skin disorder that produces red, sore lumps on the palms of the hands and soles of the feet.
“Idiopathic” conditions refer to an unknown cause, but the girl’s parents recalled that a few days days before the sores appeared, their daughter had started using her PlayStation gaming console for several hours a day.
The doctors suspected that tight and continuous grasping of the console’s controls together with repeated pushing of the buttons caused the injuries to the girl’s hands. Stopping all console gaming for 10 days led to her making a full recovery.
Reporting the case the Swiss authors, led by Behrooz Kasraee, wrote: “The final diagnosis in our patient was idiopathic palmar eccrine hidradenitis. However, we propose that the variant in this patient can be labelled more specifically as ‘PlayStation palmar hidradenitis.’”
