ABSTRACT
Although skin ulcers are an important aspect of dermatologic practice, the histopathology of these fascinating maladies has been minimally and inadequately studied. The reasons for this are twofold. First, clinicians facing difficult skin ulcers are naturally reticent to take samples and worsen the absence of skin which defines these lesions. Second, ulcers are a common skin reaction and many (although not all) conditions which may be diagnosed in ulcers can be seen in non-ulcerated skin, often in the same patient. The natural bias of editors of pathology books and journal articles seems to prefer an illustration which demonstrates epidermis for their “textbook example.” This chapter proposes to lay out general circumstances in which histopathology may be useful to the clinician treating skin ulcers and an approach to the biopsy sampling of those ulcers. In the second portion of the chapter, the emphasis will be on those particular types of ulcers most amenable to biopsy and an elucidation of the common features found therein.
