Elderly may present with severe urticaria and bullous lesions. Shoulders, back and abdomen are choice areas for scraping in the elderly. Use hand magnifying lens to identify recent burrows or papules. The alcohol will remove most of the surface ink, but will not remove the ink taken up by the burrow, thus leaving a dark irregular line. Apply mineral oil or preferably microscope immersion oil to lesions or scalpel blade and glass slides.
Some practitioners prefer using a small curette.
Change blades or curettes between scraping on different persons. Blades can be placed and removed from the handle with forceps. Used blades must be placed in a sharps container. Transfer skin scrapings from 6 different sites to a single slide or to 6 different slides per patient. These scrapings can be pushed onto the slide edge and then moved to the center of the slide.