Trichoscopy Simplified

Ebtisam Elghblawi

doi:10.2174/1874372201509010012

Abstract

It has been a long while since skin surfaces and skin lesions have been examined by dermoscopy. However examining the hair and the scalp was done again recently and gained attention and slight popularity by the practical tool, namely trichoscopy, which can be called in a simplified way as a dermoscopy of the hair and the scalp. Trichoscopy is a great tool to examine and asses an active scalp disease and hair and other signs can be specific for some scalp and hair diseases. These signs include yellow dots, dystrophic hairs, cadaverized (black dots), white dots and exclamation mark hairs. Trichoscopy magnifies hair shafts at higher resolution to enable detailed examinations with measurements that a naked eye cannot distinguish nor see. Trichoscope is considered recently the newest frontier for the diagnosis of hair and scalp disease. Aim of this paper. The aim of this paper is to simplify and sum up the main trichoscopic readings and findings of hair and scalp disorders that are commonly encountered at clinic dermatology settings.

Highlights

Any dermatology clinic will be quite busy and in many instances faced with many patients mostly women complaining of hair loss, which can have significant effects on their self-esteem and quality of life
Trichoscopy of normal scalp illustrates follicular units composing of 2-4 terminal hairs and 1 or 2 vellus hairs
According to Bhamla et al [8], the presence of hair with different calibre is classic of Female pattern hair loss (FPHL) and imitates progressive hair miniaturization due to the disease (Fig. 2)

Summary

Introduction

Any dermatology clinic will be quite busy and in many instances faced with many patients mostly women complaining of hair loss, which can have significant effects on their self-esteem and quality of life. Trichoscope is considered recently the newest frontier for the diagnosis of hair and scalp disease. The aim of this paper is to simplify and sum up the main trichoscopic readings and findings of hair and scalp disorders that are commonly encountered at clinic dermatology settings.

Objectives

Results

Conclusion