Three years of retrospective evaluation of skin biopsy results in childhood

OBJECTIVE: In our study, we aimed to evaluate retrospectively histopathological diagnoses of children based on their skin biopsies, and determine the prevalence of the disease in question. METHODS: Among patients who applied to Medeniyet University Goztepe Training and Research Hospital between January 2011 and February 2014, we retrospectively evaluated demographic data and histopathological diagnoses of patients aged between 0-17 years whose skin punch biopsy samples were obtained. RESULTS: The study population (n=566) with skin biopsy results consisted of 287 (50.7%) male, and 279 (49.2%) female patients with a mean age of 10.04±4.84 years. Biopsy materials were obtained from the various age groups as follows: 0-2 years, n=31 (5.4%); 3-5 years, n=67 (11.8%) 6-11 years, n=165 (29.1%), and 12-17 years, n=303 (53.5%). Among all age groups, we took biopsies mostly from patients with noninfectious erythematous squamous (24%) and vascular (21.2%) diseases. The determined histopathological diagnoses were leukocytoclasis vasculitis (18.9%), psoriasis (7.4%), melanocytic nevus (5.4%), and contact dermatitis (5.1%) respectively. CONCLUSION: We determined that skin punch biopsy examinations were done most frequently during adolescence and are mostly necessary for diagnosis of erythematous squamous and vascular diseases. If clinical evidence-based prevalence studies are supported with histopathological data, more significant results can be obtained.