Information on the skin biopsy

The timing of the biopsy

Performing multiple biopsies

There is sometimes good reason to perform several biopsies on skin changes at once in order to depict the progress of the disease at differing stages of development. This applies for example to the inflammatory early and fibrotic later stage of a morphaea. Repeat biopsies over a more extended time-scale can also be necessary. The best known example is the mykosis fungoides, which often shows no diagnostic useful changes at all at its earliest stages. If several biopsies are taken from a patient at one session, special care needs to be taken that each piece of tissue can be correctly identified. Confusion over the correct sequence is not rare, and is liable to have serious medical and legal consequences.

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