Finding a lump on your skin can be a serious cause for concern since it might be skin cancer. If it is an irregularly shaped and dark pigmented lesion, it may even be a melanoma. Fortunately this lump was a cyst filled with hair that couldn’t figure-out which way to grow. The picture I’ve submitted is a five micron thick cross section of this cyst that was cut after it was frozen and then stained with blue and pink dyes. The outer root sheath surrounds the hair’s cell matrix.  Some of the outer root sheaths are pigmented with melanin and some are not.

My work in the frozen section lab of the Mohs surgery clinic supports the physicians that track and surgically remove skin cancers by viewing with a microscope the slides I produce for them. Tracking cancer this way preserves healthy tissue and provides an accurate means of removing all cancer cells.

To view the Image by Michael Hetzer select