Morphological features of Spitz naevus as observed by digital videomicroscopy

Abstract

A characteristic epiluminescence pattern of pigmented epithelioid and/or spindle cell naevus, or Spitz naevus, has been described previously. The aim of this study was (i) to evaluate the characteristic morphological features both of pigmented and non-pigmented epithelioid and/or spindle cell naevi observed employing a videomicroscope, (ii) to identify their histopathological correlates and (iii) to assess the improvement in diagnostic accuracy for epithelioid and/or spindle cell naevi obtained by means of this new instrumental device. Clinical, videomicroscopic and histopathological diagnoses were performed on 26 epithelioid and/or spindle cell naevi. Moreover, the videomicroscopic pattern of each lesion was described using appropriate morphological parameters. Based on their morphological aspect detected by digital videomicroscopy, epithelioid and/or spindle cell naevi can be subdivided into three main groups: (i) darkly pigmented lesions, (ii) red or light brown ESC naevi, and (iii) lesions with dark or brown areas on a light-brown background. Whereas most epithelioid and/or spindle cell naevi of the spindle cell type belonged to the morphological group I and group 3, most epithelioid cell lesions appeared as red or light-brown coloured naevi. Finally, instrumental observation by means of a videomicroscope enabled an improvement in diagnostic accuracy with respect to the naked eye observation, with an increase in sensitivity from 15% to 58%.