Diagnosis of vulvar leukoplakia is based on symptoms and biopsy

The diagnosis of vulvar leukoplakia mainly includes two aspects, namely symptom diagnosis and pathological diagnosis.

1. Symptom diagnosis

Patients with vulvar leukoplakia should have 5 main symptoms, namely vulvar itching, often accompanied by local burning pain, which is more obvious at night; rough vulvar skin, even cracked, and lichenified; vulvar hypopigmentation, especially the whitening of the labia majora and labia minora; vulvar atrophy, in severe cases, the clitoris, labia majora, and labia minora may atrophy and adhesion, and even partial or complete disappearance of the labia minora; narrow vaginal opening, and loss of elasticity, severe cases may even affect normal urination.

2. Pathological diagnosis

According to statistics, about 50% of patients with vulvar leukoplakia have vulvar squamous cell carcinoma. Therefore, when encountering patients with atypical symptoms or chronic chapped skin, localized thickening and ulceration, pathological examination must be relied upon for diagnosis. The main method is to first apply 1% toluidine blue to the lesion area, decolorize it with 1% acetic acid solution after it dries, and use biopsy forceps to penetrate perpendicularly to the skin in the undecolorized area and reach deep into the dermis to obtain samples for biopsy diagnosis. It should be noted that samples should be obtained at multiple points, and samples should be obtained from ulcers, chapped skin, nodules, protrusions, roughness and other lesions. In addition, samples should be obtained from non-decolorized areas. Any non-decolorized area indicates the presence of naked nuclei, which can greatly improve the diagnosis rate of the disease.