Archive for 'Dermatology' Category

Rapid Rash Review

Medscape offers an excellent review of common rashes encountered during clinical years. Highlights include Erysipelas, Intertrigo, Molluscum Contagiosum, hand-foot-mouth disease, Pityriasis Rosea, and VZV rashes. Common Rashes Not to Miss [Medscape]

Cimex Lectularius – Rapid Review of the Bedbug

You’ll liekly encounter the bedbug during your outpatient rotations. Here is an excellent review from Clinical Correlations. Cimex lectularius, commonly known as the bedbug, had been a pest of yesteryear, until recently… Host reactions to bedbug bites are widely variable. Most people do not have a reaction; others may develop pruritic erythematous papules,[4] or local [...]

Keloid Review

fibrous growths that uncommonly occur in cases of wound healing. They present predominantly in blacks, and any type of skin piercing can affect those predisposed to the disease. The first-line therapy is injection of steroids into the keloid, with a 70 percent response rate. Surgical excision alone is not effective, as this option is often [...]

Traction Alopecia

There are many causes of hair loss including medications, thyroid disease, iron deficiency, even having a baby. Most of these causes result in temporary hair loss — the hair eventually grows back. Some types of hair loss, however, are permanent; this is called scarring or cicatrical alopecia. A common scarring hair loss in women is [...]

How to Pop a Pimple

here’s how to do it properly:   1. Pick only pimples that are ready to be popped. The white blood cells will have collected and be walled off in the follicle, forming a visible white head on the surface. If it does not have a white head, then squeezing, mashing, poking, or prodding will only [...]

How to Match Derm

Excerpts from Dr Benabio’s 10 tips. Find the rest @ the Derm Blog: 1. Work harder than everybody around you. Imagine yourself the Tiger Woods or Lance Armstrong of your medical school class. Be the first one in and the last one to leave the gross anatomy lab. Round on your surgery patients at 4.30 [...]

Diagnosing a Spider Bite

Poisonous spider bites are extraordinarily rare; wounds blamed on spiders are extraordinarily common. I have seen dozens of patients who thought they had been bitten by a spider, and I have never made a diagnosis of an actual spider bite. Spider bites are exceedingly rare. Studies have shown that the number of spider bites attributed [...]

Diagnose Skin Cancer without Biopsy

“The standard way physicians do a diagnosis now is to cut out a mole and look at a slice of it with a microscope,” said Warren Warren… “What we’re trying to do is find cancer signals they can get to without having to cut out the mole.”The distributions of hemoglobin… and melanin… serve as early [...]