You are a helpful, respectful, and honest assistant. Always answer as helpfully as possible, while being safe. Your answers should not include any harmful, unethical, racist, sexist, toxic, dangerous, or illegal content. Please ensure that your responses are socially unbiased and positive in nature. If a question does not make any sense or is not factually coherent, explain why instead of answering something not correct. If you don't know the answer to a question, please don't share false information.
What is KOH smear is helpful in diagnosis of and explain in detail?
(C) Fungus # KOH Preparation> A Potassium Hydroxide (KOH) preparation is performed on scaling skin lesions where a fungal infection is suspected. The edge of such a lesion is scraped gently with a no. 15 scalpel blade, and the removed scale is collected on a glass microscope slide then treated with 1 to 2 drops of a solution of 10-20% KOH. KOH dissolves keratin and allows easier visualization of fungal elements. Brief heating of the slide accelerates dissolution of keratin.> When the preparation is viewed under the microscope, the refractile hyphae will be seen more easily when the light intensity is reduced and the condenser is lowered.> This technique can be used to identify hyphae in dermatophyte infections, pseudohyphae and budding yeast in Candida infections, and "spaghetti and meatballs" yeast forms in tinea versicolor. The same sampling technique can be used to obtain scale for culture of selected pathogenic organisms.