Cutaneous blood flow measurements for the detection of malignancy in pigmented skin lesions

This work assesses cutaneous blood flow measurements as an adjunct in the differentiation between malignant and benign pigmented skin lesions. Blood flow in pigmented lesions and in their vicinity was measured by laser Doppler flowmetry (LDF), which measures the superficial skin blood flow. The lesions were then excised and histologically examined. While LDF readings for most of the benign lesions did not differ from those of control measurements, basal cell carcinomas showed a significant elevation and so did the melanomas (p less than 0.0001). Moreover, comparing the two groups of malignant lesions, namely the melanomas and basal cell carcinomas, the melanomas showed a significantly higher elevation (p less than 0.02). These results suggest that LDF may serve as an additional tool in the diagnosis of pigmented skin lesions: the probability of malignancy is low when LDF readings show no difference from adjacent normal skin; on the contrary, elevated readings suggest an increased likelihood of malignancy.