Dermoscopic examination of nail pigmentation

is usually difficult, and neither a single clinical criterion nor a combination of symptoms currently can be used to clearly distinguish malignant from benign bandlike pig-mented nail lesions. Biopsy is painful and often leaves definitive dystrophic scars. Objectives: To describe and evaluate dermoscopic pat-terns associated with longitudinal nail pigmentation. Patients and Methods: A total of 148 unselected con-secutivecasesof longitudinalmelanonychiawere included over a period of 4 years (20 melanoma, 37 nevi, 16 drug-inducednailpigmentation,45nailapparatus lentigoofvari-ous types, 8 ethnic-type nail pigmentation, and 22 subun-gual hemorrhages). All patients were recruited from the dermatology unit outpatient clinic of the Hôtel Dieu de Lyon. All cases were photographed in vivo under oil im