Prospective case series demonstrates safe biopsy avoidance in solitary pink head and neck lesions using optical coherence tomography, highlighting potential to reduce invasive procedures.
Evaluating solitary pink lesions on the head and neck remains a persistent diagnostic challenge, with dermoscopy often insufficient to distinguish benign from malignant findings. Line-field confocal optical coherence tomography (LC-OCT) offers an opportunity to bridge this gap by providing real-time structural detail. In ten dermoscopically equivocal lesions assessed with LC-OCT, five required biopsy, while LC-OCT features consistent with a benign diagnosis in the remaining five allowed safe biopsy avoidance; these lesions remained stable after 12 months of follow-up. These findings suggest that LC-OCT may support more accurate non-invasive management of dermoscopically equivocal pink lesions and potentially reduce avoidable biopsies.
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Silva et al. (2026) studied this question.
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