Indication for and Limitations of Biopsy in About Five Hundred Dermatologic Cases

The decision as to whether or not tissue should be removed for microscopic examination in a given dermatologic case involves a number of questions. The matters of scar, pain and discomfort, objection on the part of the patient, dissemination of the process involved and, finally, the question of the amount of information to be obtained by microscopic study of the tissue are all to be considered. One finds in the analysis of a series of cases that the opinion of the microscopist is about equal to that of the clinician in that certain cases are typical microscopically but obscure clinically, whereas the reverse is true in another group. The pathologist thus makes an excellent consultant, being the authority in some cases and in others corroborating the diagnosis only by correlation of the histologic and clinical picture. In inflammatory processes this correlation is of the utmost importance. The microscopist either will