2018 Volume 43 Issue 5 Pages 573-579
Purpose: Ultrasonography (US) is a non-invasive method to confirm the presence of undercutaneous tumors, to measure their size and depth, and to evaluate their characteristics. The purpose of this study was to assess the diagnostic accuracy of US in comparison with histopathological findings of skin tumors.
Subjects and Methods: Ninety-three patients were retrospectively studied who had undergone both US and histopathological examinations for the diagnosis of skin lesions from January 2016 to June 2016. The diagnostic accuracy of US was evaluated by two methods, one was subjective and the other was objective and it used Receiver Operating Characteristic curve (ROC) analysis.
Results: Histopathological results showed that 74 cases were benign and 19 cases were malignant skin tumors. The sensitivity and the specificity for the subjective US evaluation ware 94.7% and 90.5%, respectively. On the other hand, the objective US evaluation using ROC found that the area under the curve was 0.739, and the sensitivity was 84.2% and the specificity was 64.9% at the optimal cutoff value of 6.
Conclusion: The present results suggest that there is a limitation using only the objective assessment of US imaging for the diagnosis of skin tumors, therefore it is important to understand the histological features of various skin tumors to increase the diagnostic accuracy.
