Trichoscopy Update 2011

In the 2011 review, researchers provided an overview of trichoscopy as a valuable non-invasive diagnostic tool for various hair and scalp diseases. They described specific trichoscopic features for different types of alopecia: non-cicatricial alopecias often have empty follicular openings; alopecia areata shows signs of active disease with black dots and micro-exclamation mark hairs, and severity with yellow dots and vellus hairs; androgenic alopecia is identified by hair shaft thickness heterogeneity and other features, particularly in the frontal area. Cicatricial alopecias lack follicular openings and have specific signs depending on the subtype, such as perifollicular inflammation in lichen planopilaris. Hair shaft disorders and inflammatory scalp diseases also have distinctive trichoscopic signs, like the large arborizing vessels in discoid lupus erythematosus and the twisted blood vessels in scalp psoriasis. The largest study mentioned in the document differentiated scalp psoriasis from seborrheic dermatitis using specific vascular patterns and scale color. UV-enhanced trichoscopy (UVET) emerged as a new technique to improve visualization of scalp conditions. The document also noted trichoscopy's potential use in general medicine, exemplified by identifying follicular spicules in multiple myeloma.