Patterns Of Dermoscopy in cases with pigmented skin lesion in A Tertiary Care Hospital.

Abstract

Objective: To determine the frequency of different pigmented skin lesions identified on dermoscopy in patients present-ing to a tertiary care hospital and to assess their distribution according to demographic and clinical variables
Methodology: This cross-sectional study was conducted in the Department of Dermatology, Nishtar medical university, Multan over a period of one month after obtaining ethical approval. The study was carried out over a period of six months from 08-10-2020 to 07-04-2021. After taking informed consent, a total of 156 patients of both genders, aged be-tween 20 to 60 years, presenting with pigmented skin lesions were included using a non-probability consecutive sam-pling technique. Patients who had received any treatment in the last one month or had a documented malignancy were excluded. Data was collected using a predesigned proforma including demographic variables (age, gender) and clinical characteristics such as duration of lesion, itching, diabetes mellitus, and family history of melanoma. All patients under-went dermoscopic examination using a FireflyPro DE350 dermatoscope, performed by a consultant dermatologist. The collected data was entered and analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 23.0, where quantitative variables were presented as mean ± standard deviation and qualitative variables as frequencies and per-centages and chi-square test was used to assess associations, with a p-value ≤ 0.05 considered statistically significant.
Results: In this study, a total of 156 cases were included, comprising 85 females (54.49%) and 71 males (45.51%). The mean age of participants was 43.06 ± 8.23 years, with an average symptom duration of 3.14 ± 2.11 months. Among the 156 cases, itching was reported in 47 (30.13%), diabetes mellitus in 18 (11.54%), a family history of melanoma in 7 (4.49%), and bleeding in 23 (14.74%). The most frequently observed lesions were melanocytic nevi in 33 (21.15%), li-chen planus in 24 (15.38%), dysplastic nevus in 14 (8.97%), and seborrheic keratosis in 11 (7.05%).
Conclusion: Dermoscopy is a useful tool for diagnosis of pigmented lesion and the most commonly noted lesion was melanocytic nevi followed by lichen planus. There was no significant association between confounders of the study and study outcomes.
Keywords: Dermoscopy, Melanocytic nevi, seborrheic keratosis, Lichen planus.