Application and challenge of reflectance confocal microscopy in the diagnosis of pigmented nevus.

Objective: To investigate the application and challenge of reflectance confocal microscopy (RCM) in the diagnosis of pigmented nevus.

Methods: A total of 997 patients with clinical diagnosis of pigmented nevus were included in the study, and RCM imaging was performed on the lesion of each patient. A biopsy was performed in 78 of these patients for histological diagnosis. We retrospectively analyzed the results of RCM diagnosis and histological diagnosis and then found the RCM characteristics of the histologically confirmed lesion.

Results: According to the RCM images, 823 of the 997 (82.55%) patients were diagnosed with pigmented nevus, while 113 (11.33%) were not diagnosed by dermatologists using RCM. Of the 78 biopsy lesions, 36 of the 46 (78.26%) cases diagnosed with pigmented nevus were consistent with histological diagnosis, while three were rediagnosed with dermatofibromas, four were seborrheic keratosis, one was malignant melanoma in situ, and two were lentigo.

Conclusions: RCM exhibits a high diagnostic accuracy for patients with clinical diagnosis of pigmented nevus. However, due to the limitation of RCM scanning depth and the commonality of the microscopic characteristics of related diseases, RCM still faces certain challenges in the diagnosis of pigmented nevus.