Melanocytic nevi simulant of melanoma with medicolegal relevance

A group of melanocytic benign nevi are prone to be misdiagnosed as nodular or superficial spreading melanoma. This review illustrates the most frequent forms of these nevi in direct comparison with their malignant morphologic counterparts. The nevi are: hyper-cellular form of common nevus to be distinguished from nevoid melanoma, Spitz nevus (vs spitzoid melanoma), Reed nevus (vs melanoma with features of Reed nevus), cellular atypical blue nevus (vs melanoma on blue nevus), acral nevus (vs acral melanoma), Clark dysplastic nevus (vs superficial spreading melanoma), desmoplastic nevi (vs desmoplastic melanoma), benign proliferative nodules in congenital nevi (vs melanoma on congenital nevi), epithelioid blue nevus (vs animal type melanoma) and regressed nevus (vs regressed melanoma). For each single ‘pair’ of morphological look-alikes, a specific set of morphological, immunohistochemical and genetic criteria is provided.