Sometimes truth and everyday reality is stranger than fiction. Had someone told me that someday I would be discussing one-eyed cyclopean sheep and sonic hedgehogs with my skin cancer patients, I would have laughed. But alas! Dermatologists are now sharing the bizarre tale of these creatures with patients diagnosed with complicated forms of a common skin cancer called Basal Cell Carcinoma.
“But I never had acne as a teenager!” says the distraught 30-year-old woman.
Oh, how often those exact words are uttered in my office. Acne is a normal part of adolescence and something you will eventually outgrow, right? Conventional wisdom says that adults have cancer and heart disease to worry about, not pimples. For many women, though, the breakouts do not start until adulthood.
Doctors have been prescribing it for decades for its protective cardiovascular properties. Millions of beating hearts are benefiting from it right now. Its ability to relieve pain and fever is so well known that “Take two aspirin and call me in the morning” is engrained in our psyche.
Sometimes I feel like the only person around anymore without a tattoo.
I’ve just never liked anything enough to permanently put it on my body. Tattooing is an art of self and tribal expression that humans have been doing since we developed opposable thumbs.
Would you trust a smartphone app to spot your melanoma? Apps do about everything fairly well, so why wouldn’t you?
The Journal of the American Medical Association Dermatology reports that 3 out of the 4 apps designed to detect melanoma fail miserably when put to the test. The three that failed were all based on automatic algorithms. The best score among of these types of apps misidentified a startling 30 percent of melanoma as benign lesions. One program found only 7 percent of confirmed images of melanoma to be rated as “suspicious.” The only app to score well sent the image to a board certified dermatologist who evaluated the image. (No, it was not me and I do not know this individual).
You probably have heard by now that the cold sores on your lip are a form of herpes. This is true. While classically not associated with the same strain that causes genital herpes, there are ever increasing rates of crossover infections. In the interest of clarity, I am focusing on lip cold sores today; some people refer to them as fever blisters.
In case you haven't noticed, it is wintertime in the north state. And along with all the holiday joy comes dry skin and painfully itchy rashes.
Be aware that dilution matters, ask your doctor how much saline solution he or she uses to dilute the vial of BOTOX Cosmetic and how many units will be injected in each area.
Growing evidence over the past decade has identified psoriasis as a risk factor for heart attack, strokes and hardening of the arteries.
It seems the search for famed aviator Amelia Earhart's crash site may hinge upon her freckles. Her disappearance over the South Pacific 75 years ago is a familiar story to most Americans.