Light patches on head of penis

Thank you for your reply. I was wondering what would determine just hypopigmentation as opposed to something more serious such as BXO/ lichen sclerosus?

Kan, I have BXO / Lichen Sclerosus (LS) and while the photos would not suggest you have LS the only conclusive way to know would be for a Dermatologist to do a Biopsy of a skin sample taken from where you have the patches.

Simple check: are the patches on top of the normal level of skin or would the different pigmentation / appearance seem to be internal, or on the lower levels of your skin.

LS infected skin feels a great deal different from the skin surrounding it, so if you lightly run a finger tip over the patches does the skin have a different texture?

A simple test you can do is to get some regular / ordinary skin cream and rub a small amount into the patches each day for about 7 or 8 days. LS will normally react to the cream and the surface level of the patches will start to look much worse. Obviously, any time you get a reaction stop applying the cream - this is not a conclusive test - but would give an indication.

Hi Wee,

Thank you for your reply.

there does not seem to be any different texture over the areas and the pigmentation does seem

to be internal rather than raised. However, it does seem that google suggests that white patches could be precancerous which is quite concerning..

This is the problem with doing searches for information, irrespective of the health condition, it is far too easy to jump to the wrong conclusion.

With a severe condition such as one of the Lichen based disorders there are reported instances of these being linked to genital cancer - i.) it is very unlikely you have LS or anything like it; ii.) if you had, it would be extremely unlikely that if you did have something like LS that it would actually lead to cancer, I would suggest the few existing cases were linked to a total lack of any form of treatment.

If you need to achieve peace of mind go see a Dermatologist - more than likely the response you received from Paul is the more likely case of what you actually have .....