Background: Dermoscopic examination is a newly introduced non-invasive method for dermatological diagnosis. Although it is known to improve the diagnosis rate more than the visual inspection, accurate understanding and learning about the diagnosis of the dermoscopic diagnosis is required.
Objectives: The study investigated the effect of the dermoscopy education on dermatologists’ diagnostic interpretation ability about several skin disorders.
Methods: Total 34 Korean dermatologists who attended a 1 day course of dermoscopy training program (Korea University Dermatology Symposium and Workshop, August 27,2017) completed both pre-test before the course and post-test after the course. The contents of training program and questionnaires of tests (50 of each test) were comprised of malignant melanoma, BCC,SCC and other several benign skin disorders.
Results: The sensitivity of all disease were increased in the post-test (ranged 26.0% to 108.5% of rate increase) and significant increase was seen in eccrine poroma and dermatofibroma. The overall diagnostic accuracy rate of participants revealed a significant increase in the post-test comparing to the pre-test (p<0.05).
Conclusion: The improvement of diagnostic interpretation ability of dermatologists receiving the dermoscopy education program was shown in this study. Therefore, for dermatologists, dermoscopic examination requires repeated learning of an accurate interpretation of dermoscopic features to diagnose skin disorders.