Trichoscopy Simplified

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.