Background: Extramammary Paget's disease (EMPD) is a rare cutaneous malignancy that can be easily confused with other diseases due to its diverse clinical manifestations, delaying the timing of treatment. Therefore, early diagnosis is extremely important. It has been reported that dermoscopy can be used to evaluate superficial skin tumors.
Objective: To investigate the dermoscopic characteristics of EMPD diagnosed by histopathology and to develop a decision tree model that can provide clinicians with a reference to facilitate early diagnosis.
Methods: All patients were evaluated by dermoscopic and histopathologic examinations. Dermoscopic images were assessed, and a decision tree model was constructed using SPSS (version 25.0).
Results: A total of 49 patients were included in this study. We found that EMPD was most likely to be misdiagnosed when the disease duration was less than 2.5 years. Porcelain-white patches were the only key clinical feature other varying dermoscopic features could not be differentiated from those of EMPD-mimicking diseases. Polymorphic vessels were considered to be significant when the duration of the disease ranged from 0.1 year to 2.5 years. However, when the duration was >2.5 years, present (or absent) glomerular vessels were all considered EMPD.
Conclusions: Dermoscopy can be used as an auxiliary diagnostic tool for the diagnosis and management of EMPD. The decision tree can guide clinical diagnosis further validation studies are necessary due to the limited number of cases.
Keywords: Decision tree; Dermoscopy; Extramammary Paget's disease.
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