Clinical and histopathological analysis of 152 pigmented skin lesion excisions apart from melanocytic nevus due to cosmetic reasons

Abstract

Background Melanocytic naevus (MN) is a normal, benign proliferation of melanocytes, which may be acquired or congenital, and it is the most common pigmented lesion posing an aesthetic problem for many patients and can be found anywhere on the skin. There are several other types of pigmented skin lesions apart from MN such as seborrhoeic keratosis (SK) which mimics both MN and basal cell carcinoma (BCC).Methods A retrospective study was designed in order to investigate the characteristics of 152 non-MN pigmented skin lesion excisions performed between June 2009 and October 2014. All patients desired their lesions to be removed for only cosmetic reasons. None of our patients described their lesions as 'suspicious'. All patients were evaluated for age and gender in addition to the clinical characteristics of the lesion such as location, size and morphology. Twenty-two different types of pigmented lesion were identified.Results A total of 152 patients underwent surgery. Of the 152 patients, 83 were female (54.6 %) and 69 were male (45.4 %). The average age of our patient group was 51.4 (12-87) years. The average size of the lesions was 1.27 cm(2) (0.01-6 cm 2).Conclusions Seborrhoeic keratosis was the most common lesion type (49.6 %), followed by dermatofibroma, haemangioma, fibroepithelial polyp and BCC. These five lesions in total constituted 79.4 % of all lesions. It was also observed that approximately 19 % of all excised lesions were malignant, pre-malignant or a feature of a systemic disease. The main complaint for all of our patients was cosmetic disturbance. None of the lesions were symptomatic, and none of the patients considered their lesions as 'suspicious'.