Background: Since the late 1970s clinical criteria for dysplastic melanocytic nevi (DMN) have been proposed and discussed. However, to our knowledge, no rigorous quantitative evaluation of the ability of examiners to agree on the gross morphologic features ascribed to DMN or atypical melanocytic lesions in general has been conducted.
Objective: The purpose of the study was to determine rates of interclinician agreement for recognizing seven clinical features associated with melanocytic lesions.
Methods: The gross morphologic features of 156 pigmented lesions, judged to be the clinically most atypical, from 156 consecutively examined patients with cutaneous melanoma were analyzed. Independent of the other clinicians' examinations, four physicians (two medical oncologists, one internist-epidemiologist, and one dermatologist-dermatopathologist) recorded seven gross morphologic features of the most atypical pigmented lesion on each patient. For up to 122 patients, the rates of interobserver agreement on recognizing these clinical features were measured by intraclass correlation.
Results: Among the clinical features assessed, the examiners noted macular components in 85.7% to 96.3% of lesions, asymmetry in 47.2% to 79.5%, irregular borders in 55.1% to 80.2%, ill-defined borders in 40.1% to 83.9%, and haphazard color in 40.8% to 73.9% of lesions. Despite this range of variance among examiners, there were statistically significant rates of interclinician agreement for the recognition of the latter features. There was less agreement in assessing individual colors within lesions.
Conclusion: These findings substantiate that certain gross morphologic features routinely used in the clinical evaluation of melanocytic lesions can be recognized with a significant degree of reliability.