Contribution of Dermatopathology in the Diagnosis of Cutaneous Diseases in Côte d’Ivoire

Abstract

Introduction : Dermatopathology is a fundamental complementary examination for the diagnosis of certain skin conditions when the clinic is hesitant. We therefore initiated this work in order to determine the contribution of dermatopathology in the diagnostic management of certain dermatoses at the Treichville University Hospital Centre of Abidja n. Material and methods : This is a cross-sectional descriptive study with data collection from medical records in the dermatology-venereology and pathological anatomy departments of the Treichville University Hospital Centre . Results : We included and analyzed 184 patients with a sex ratio of 1.2. 46.2% of lesions were generalized with 2% mucosal localization. Erythematosquamous lesions ( 24.45%) and papules ( 22.82%) were the most biopsied lesions. The single biopsy sample accounted for 71.2% of the cases and the lesion size ranged from 0.5 cm to 10 cm. Biopsy parts of the lesion alone accounted for 65.2% versus 34.8% for those straddling healthy skin and lesion. Histological diagnosis was established in 91.3%. Kaposi disease accounted for 14.9% of cases followed by psoriasis 11.3%. In the case of three diagnostic hypotheses, the concordance was 84.8%. It was 76.6% for two hypotheses mentioned and 52.3% for a single hypothesis. Conclusion : This work shows that in more than half of the cases , the clinical hypotheses and the histological diagnosis match. It suggests however to continue the training of dermatologists to improve the skin biopsies and invites to initiate clinicopathological confrontations to better refine the diagnoses.