Reflectance confocal microscopy for non‐invasive diagnosis of childhood‐onset vulvar lichen sclerosus: A retrospective study.

Reflectance confocal microscopy (RCM) enables good visualization of cutaneous structures, akin to an optical biopsy.[6] The examination takes a few minutes to be performed and is painless even when performed in sensitive areas such as the penis or vulva region. Vulvar lichen sclerosus (VLS) is not rare in paediatric dermatology.[1] Although histopathology is gold standard, the diagnosis of VLS is primarily based on clinical findings rather than histopathology,[2] which is may not always be practical or necessary in children.[3] There are no sufficient researches about using non-invasive tools in the diagnosis of VLS,[4] only few case report available on dermoscopy examination,[5] which might be less efficient as it studies only the surface. Notably, all VLS lesions were significantly characterized by the presence of unique highly reflective, quasi-circular large cells in the EDJ and superficial dermis at RCM. [Extracted from the article]