The accuracy of a biopsy depends on the expertise of the clinician. If a decision not to do a complete excision is made, partial biopsy specimens are usually taken from the most deeply pigmented, elevated, nodular, or other clinically suspect area. However, as a result of sampling error or a lack of correlation between the clinical and histological features, the portion biopsied may not be the most histologically representative portion of the lesion (Ng, Barzilai et al. 2003). Ng et al (Ng, Barzilai et al. 2003) found that in 95 of 108 initial shave or punch biopsies (88%), the physicians’ clinical assessment of the melanoma for.
