Dermatoscopic patterns of acral melanocytic nevi and assessment of distribution futures of these patterns

Dermatoscopy is a fast, cost-effective and easy-to-use diagnostic tool that prevents unnecessary surgical interventions in pigmented skin lesions and provides a diagnostic accuracy close to the level of the one obtained by histopathology. Today, this method has been widely used to distinguish malignant and benign melanocytic lesions. Despite improvements in dermatoscopy during the last 20 years, studies on acral pigmented lesions are not much. In the present study, we aimed to investigate dermatoscopic patterns and localization characteristics of acral pigmented lesions. Because of the different anatomical structure of palmoplantar region, dermatoscopic patterns seen in acral melanocytic lesions are unique. While ?parallel furrow pattern?, ?lattice-like pattern? and ?fibrillar pattern? were the main patterns observed during dermatoscopic examination of benign melanocytic lesions with acral location, ?reticular pattern?, ?homogeneous pattern? and ?globular pattern? were the less observed patterns. In malignant melanoma, ?parallel ridge pattern? was the typical dermatoscopic pattern. In our study, where 126 acral melanocytic lesions of 102 patients were evaluated with dermatoscopy, ?parallel furrow pattern? was the most frequently observed pattern followed by ?lattice-like pattern?, ?dot or globular pattern?, ?fibrillar pattern?, ?homogeneous pattern?, ?reticular pigmentation pattern? and ?atypical pattern? respectively. Although most of the lesions evaluated in our study were located on fingers, there were few lesions which were observed on palmoplantar localization. While ?parallel furrow pattern? was seen in nearly all localizations, ?lattice-like pattern? was observed in lesions located at heels and the medial side of the feet. As a conclusion, we think that our study is not only the first study demonstrating dermatoscopic patterns and localization characteristics of acral melanocytic lesions in our region, but also allows comparison with similar international studies.