Dermatoscopy of the skin

Dermatoscopy is currently the most important examination method for the early detection of skin cancer and its precursors. Only under the microscope can the specific surface structures of skin cancer be clearly and reliably distinguished from other skin changes and diseases in order to treat them in good time or, if necessary, to record them for further diagnosis.

Dermatoscopy compensates for the diagnostic weakness of skin screening, which is performed with the naked eye. Screening tends to only detect larger, i.e., advanced skin changes or tumors. When using a dermatoscope, however, smaller pigmented lesions or changes in these lesions can also be seen in good time and detected thanks to the magnification provided by the microscope. This means that treatment can be started much earlier than if one were to wait until the changes were visible to the naked eye.

That is why the dermatoscope, introduced in 1989, is now part of the standard equipment of all dermatologists, not only for the early detection of skin cancer. This handy microscope greatly improves the quality of a diagnosis. Suspicious pigmented moles can be examined and diagnosed under high magnification (5 to 15 times).

A comparison shows what a difference this factor makes. Even at “only” 5x magnification, a small table tennis ball (4 cm in diameter) becomes as large as a heavy medicine ball (20 cm in diameter). The dermatoscope allows even very fine structures of a pigmented lesion to be displayed and examined in detail with corresponding size and clarity. As a result, reflected light microscopy has doubled the accuracy of skin cancer diagnoses to almost 90%. The remaining 10% is achieved through the use of non-invasive techniques such as digital video follow-up, OCT, and confocal laser microscopy. In addition, tissue samples may be taken from light skin cancer and examined histopathologically.