Sabrina Suhail Pal, Faria Asad, Khawar Khurshid, Tahir Saeed Haroon.
Correlation between clinical diagnoses and histopathological results in Skin Diseases: A study of 525 cases.
J Pak Assoc Derma Jan ;12(2):73-6.

Background: Before advising a skin biopsy, most clinicians make a diagnosis which gives a clue to a dermatopathologist to look for the microscopic features of the possible diseases. This may increase the chances of reaching a diagnosis on histopathology. Our aim was to evaluate the histopathoiogical results and clinicopathological correlation when one or more than one provisional diagnoses were provided by the clinicians. Patients and methods: This study was comparative in which five hundred and twenty five patients with skin diseases and requiring a biopsy were evaluated. One or more than one clinical diagnoses were provided in each case. Patients with a diagnostic histopathology and clinicopathological correlation were assessed and subdivided according to the number of clinical diagnoses. Results: There were 291 males and 234 females, aged between four to eighty years. Clinicopathological correlation was seen in 380 (72.38%) cases. As the number of differential diagnoses (1, 2, 3 and 4) increased, clinicopathological correlation (71.29%, 72.51%, 73.27% and 75.86% respectively) improved. However the difference was not statistically significant (p > 0.5 in each case). Conclusion: Clinical information and diagnosis is important for histopathological interpretation. Increasing the number of differential diagnoses results in better clinicopathological correlation, though it is not statistically significant. As there were only 29 patients with four clinical diagnoses, we need to study larger number of patients in this group to see the impact on histopathological results.

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