[Pathology of travelers in the Antilles. Role of imported metropolitan pathology].

A preliminary and retrospective review--with a southern perspective--of some traveller's pathologies, mostly imported, and leading to hospital admission in Guadeloupe (FWI). End stage patients (cancer, AIDS...) frequently travel for a last, "compassional" trip. Ischemic heart disease is the leading pathology imported from the mother country (France). As well as in diabetes or psychiatric illness, destabilization frequently occurs as a consequence of travel (jet lag). Compulsive tennis plus dehydration cause the very common stone passage of nephrolithiasis. Concern is growing for heroin withdrawal syndrome or cocaine (crack)-abuse, and for supply for rare and expensive anticancer, antigraft rejection or antinfective (AIDS) agents. Much more familiar to us are photodermatitis, larva migrans, dengue, or ciguaterra, locally acquired. On the other hand some pathologies are quite "exotic" to us: Kaposi sarcoma, Lyme, or Behçet disease, familial mediterranean fever, brucellosis.