ArticleFrontiers in medicine2025
Dermoscopy-guided sampling improves the diagnostic yield of fungal culture for onychomycosis: a comparative study.
Article in Frontiers in medicine, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
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Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Onychomycosis in KwaZulu-Natal: Clinical spectrum, risk factors and fungal susceptibility.Journal of the colleges of medicine of South Africa · 2026Article
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8 authors.
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Abstract
Background: The diagnosis of onychomycosis relies on mycological examination, but the high false-negative rate of fungal culture, often due to improper sampling, remains a significant clinical challenge. Dermoscopy has emerged as a valuable tool for visualizing specific nail structures associated with fungal invasion. This study aimed to evaluate whether using dermoscopy to guide the site of specimen collection can improve the positive rate of fungal culture for onychomycosis compared to conventional sampling. Methods: We conducted a comparative study involving 1,843 nail units from patients with clinically suspected onychomycosis. Samples were allocated to either a conventional sampling group ( Results: The dermoscopy-guided group demonstrated a significantly higher fungal culture positive rate than the conventional group (72.5% vs. 66.0%, Conclusion: Dermoscopy-guided sampling significantly improves the diagnostic yield of fungal culture for onychomycosis by enabling precise targeting of viable fungal reservoirs. Integrating dermoscopy into the routine sampling procedure is a simple, non-invasive, and effective strategy to reduce false-negative results and enhance diagnostic accuracy.
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