The role of dermoscopy in the diagnosis of cicatricial marginal alopecia

Conflicts of interest: none declared. Sir, A distinctive pattern of alopecia has been recently described by Goldberg1 as a new entity: cicatricial marginal alopecia (CMA). Although her patients presented clinical features suggestive of traction alopecia the author questioned this diagnosis as the hair loss was severe, most patients were not African‐American and 40% of them had no history of traction or hair styling. The occipital area, which is usually not affected in traction alopecia, was commonly involved, making alopecia areata an important differential diagnosis. We report five white women with identical clinical and pathological features and no history of hair styling or other causes of traction. Patients were seen at the University of Bologna from 2005 to 2008. Dermoscopic images were obtained with a computerized polarized‐light videomicroscope (FotoFinder dermoscope®; Teachscreen Software, Bad Birnbach, Germany) with lenses with × 20 to × 70 magnification, at × 10 increments. Epiluminescent mode was used. Biopsies were performed with two 4‐mm punches for horizontal and vertical sections.