Infantile Cortical Hyperostosis / Caffey-Silverman disease

Introduction

Infantile Cortical Hyperostosis is an unusual disease of an unknown etiology. It is also known as Caffey's disease or Caffey-Silverman disease after the persons who discovered it. The main feature of the disease is a peculiar cortical thickening of certain bones like the mandible, the clavicles, and the shafts of long bones.

Several other diseases like syphilis, scurvy, rickets and traumatic injury also produce cortical thickening in bones, but as yet researchers have been unable to find any link between these diseases and infantile cortical hyperostosis.