Atopic dermatitis: summary of the 1st Georg Rajka Symposium 1998 and a literature review.

Atopic dermatitis (atopic eczema) was the subject of the 1st Georg Rajka Symposium in Davos, on September 6 ± 9, 1998. This summary and critical review of present knowledge of atopic dermatitis, the most common chronic in ̄ammatory disease of children in industrialized countries, is aimed at physicians and nurses, researchers or students who want a brief introduction to atopic dermatitis to enable them to give optimal service to patients and parents and to make decisions about the direction of future research. It is a subjective review and cannot fully cover all aspects of the subject. However, it focuses on important issues concerning atopic dermatitis in 1998, just a century after it was ®rst described by Besnier (1).