[Basic principles of skin biopsy]

Skin biopsies are easy to perform, can be done under direct visual control, allow precise clinico-pathological correlation, and, accordingly, the significance of skin biopsies is very high. This review discusses the basic principles of the interpretation of skin biopsies and alerts to problems that may result from the absence of representative changes of a pathological process in the tissue sections, poor processing of tissue, incorrect assessment of histopathology findings, and shortcomings in the clinico-histopathological correlation.