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Abstract
Under the right conditions, dermoscopy allows us to observe the vascular features
of many different types of skin lesions. The visualization and identification of vessels
with a characteristic morphology can be the key to diagnosis, especially in hypopigmented
lesions in which the typical pigmented structures are not visible. Some of the more
characteristic associations are the presence of crown vessels in sebaceous hyperplasia,
arborizing telangiectasias in basal cell carcinoma, comma-shaped vessels in intradermal
and compound nevi, dotted vessels in Spitz nevi and melanoma, and hairpin vessels
in seborrheic keratoses. The recognition of distinctive vascular features can be of
great help in the diagnosis of many types of skin lesions, and very often such patterns
are the only key to the diagnosis of melanoma.