Week 9 - Skin Flashcards
What is a patch?
A flat area of altered colour >0.5cm
What is a plaque?
Palpable scaling raised lesion >0.5cm in diameter
What’s a papule?
Solid raised lesion
What is a nodule?
Solid raised lesion >0.5cm in diameter with a deeper component
What is a vesicle?
Raised, clear fluid filled lesion
What is a bulla?
Raised, clear fluid filled lesion >0.5cm in diameter
What benign lesions can occur on the skin?
- skin tags
- moles
- cysts
- papillomas
What are fibroepithelial polyps?
- common
- generally in middle age and older people
- neck, trunk, face and groin
- flesh coloured bag like lesion
What are naevi?
-proliferation of melanocytes (pigment-producing cell)
Naevus cells within the:
-dermo-epidermal junction (junctional naevi)
- dermo-epidermal junction and dermis (compound naevi)
- just in dermis (intradermal naevi)
What is a sebaceous cyst?
Clinical term encompasses 2 types of cysts:
- epidermoid cyst
- pilar cyst
-derived from invagination of epithelium
What is seborrhoeic keratosis?
- middle aged and older people
- arise spontaneously
- trunk, head and neck
What is a haemangioma?
- benign vascular tumours of the dermis
- tend to occur in children
- bluey red surface
What malignant lesions can occur on the skin?
- basal cell carcinoma
- squamous cell carcinoma
- Bowen’s disease
- melanoma
What is basal cell carcinoma?
- most common human cancer
- slow growing tumours
- rarely metastasise
- occur at sun exposed sites
What is Bowen’s disease?
- precursor to squamous cell carcinoma
- epidermal dysplasia
- sun damage
What is squamous cell carcinoma?
-second commonest skin tumour of sun-exposed sites in older people
What is melanoma?
- fairly common
- arises in sun damaged skin
- can be very aggressive and spread widely
-early diagnosis means it can be removed
What are the signs of melanoma?
A - asymmetry B - border irregular C - colour - variable pigmentation in lesion D - diameter - mostly >6mm E - enlarge
Why may rashes occur on the skin?
- inflammatory skin reactions
- eczema (clinical term that encompasses many different conditions)
What is psoriasis?
- commonly affects elbows, knees, scalp, lumbosacral area and glans penis
- can be associated with nail changes, arthritis, myopathy, enteropathy and spondylic joint disease
- well demarcated, salmon pink plaques with silver scaling
What is scabies?
- common and very itchy
- caused by human scabies mites
- common in the young and the elderly
How is scabies spread?
By direct skin to skin contact with someone who already has scabies
- mites are found mainly in the web spaces of the fingers and on the palms of the hands, the wrists, ankles and soles of feet
- burrows appear as small greyish lines on the skin
When may the skin be involved in systemic disease?
- meningitis
- SLE (systemic lupus erythematosus)
- internal malignancy
What is a macule?
A flat area of altered colour
