Dermoscopic aspect of verrucous epidermal nevi: new findings

Verrucous epidermal nevi are cutaneous hamartomas with many clinical variants. Dermoscopic features of verrucous epidermal nevus have rarely been investigated. We aimed to identify dermoscopic findings of the entity which will facilitate the diagnostic process by reducing the use of invasive diagnostic methods.

The study included the patients with histopathologically approved verrucous epidermal nevus. Clinical, dermoscopic, and histopathological features of the patients were retrospectively reviewed and the findings identified were recorded. Dermoscopic examination was performed with a polarized-light handheld dermoscope with 10-fold magnification.

The most common dermoscopic features were thick brown circles, thick brown branched lines, and terminal hairs. The most common vessel pattern was dotted vessels. Branched thick brown lines, brown globules, brown dots forming lines, serpiginous brown dots, white and brown exophytic papillary structures, fine scale, thick adherent scale, and cerebriform structures were the other findings.

We observed many vascular and nonvascular dermoscopic findings which were not described previously for the entity. Dermoscopic examination of the verrucous epidermal nevi may lead to more reliable clinical interpretation and thus may reduce the need for histopathological investigation.