Department of Dermatology and Cutaneous Surgery (Dr. Usatine) and Department of Family and Community Medicine (Drs. Usatine and Shama), University of Texas Health, San Antonio; Memorial Sloan Kettering Skin Cancer Center, Hauppauge, NY (Dr. Marghoob); Department of Dermatology and Cutaneous Surgery, University of Miami, Fla (Dr. Jaimes) usatine@uthscsa.edu
Dr. Marghoob discloses that he provides free advice to Heine, Canfield, and 3GEN regarding their products. He has also received honoraria to speak for 3GEN and to test equipment for Heine, 3GEN, and Canfield.
The other authors reported no potential conflict of interest relevant to this article.
Increasingly, dermoscopy is being used in the diagnosis of many other skin, nail, and hair problems. In fact, one great bonus to owning a dermatoscope is the accurate diagnosis of scabies. Dermoscopy can be helpful in detecting the scabies mite without having to scrape and use the microscope. Moreover, the sensitivity and specificity of a dermoscopic diagnosis is higher than for scraping and microscopy.19
What you’ll see
The anterior legs and mouth parts of the mite resemble a triangle (arrowhead, delta-wing jet) (FIGURE 17). Look for a burrow, and the mite can be seen at the end of the burrow as a faint circle with a leading darker triangle. The burrow itself has a distinctive pattern that has more morphology than an excoriation and has been described as the contrail of a jet plane. Using a dermatoscope attached to your smartphone allows you to magnify the image even further while maintaining a safe distance from the mite.
CORRESPONDENCE Richard P. Usatine, MD, 903 W. Martin, Skin Clinic – Historic Building, San Antonio, TX 78207; usatine@uthscsa.edu.
