Navarrete-Dechent Cristián, Bajaj Shirin, Marghoob Ashfaq A, Marchetti Michael A
Department of Dermatology, Facultad de Medicina, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
Dermatology Service, Department of Medicine, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA.
Mycoses. 2015 Jun;58(6):383-6. doi: 10.1111/myc.12333. Epub 2015 Apr 28.
Dermatophytoses are common skin infections. Traditional diagnostic tests such as skin scrapings for light microscopy examination, fungal cultures and biopsies remain imperfect due to false-negative test results, cost, time required to perform the procedure, time delays in test results and/or a requirement for an invasive procedure. Herein, we present a case of an 80-year-old female whose tinea incognito was non-invasively diagnosed within seconds using handheld reflectance confocal microscopy (RCM). As non-invasive skin imaging continues to improve, we expect light-based office microscopy to be replaced with technologies such as RCM, which has multiple and continually expanding diagnostic applications.
