Medical dermatology encompasses the evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases related to the skin, hair, nails and diseases of the oral cavity. The interesting thing about medical dermatology is some diseases are confined to the skin. They start in the skin, they involve the skin, and they stay confined to the skin. But one of the interesting things about medical dermatology is some diseases are actually a systemic disease that manifest in the skin. And so oftentimes we’ll see evidence in the skin of something that’s going on internally. It’s important to understand those signs and symptoms because what can appear to a patient to be something related only to their skin can tell us that there’s something going on internally that could be very serious. It’s important to understand that and consider that when treating the patient.
Medical dermatology or clinical dermatology encompasses all aspects of dermatology outside of surgery. Surgery is removing skin cancer, treating skin cancer, but medical dermatology is the treatment of the very common diseases: acne, warts, rosacea, psoriasis, eczema, as well as moles, skin cancer evaluations, and skin cancer surveillance. We have many, many other types of more rare diseases that we treat. The nice thing about this practice is because of our training and our experience, we are able to treat a lot of the very uncommon and more challenging diseases in medical dermatology. Oftentimes we’ll get referrals from other dermatologist in the area, city, or state that come to us because they know that we have specific expertise in dealing with very difficult and complicated diseases.
The beauty of dermatology is that we have hundreds of diagnoses that we know, treat, and understand. We have the bread and butter diseases that I talked about in the beginning but we also have the knowledge and understanding of many, many other diseases and how they relate to the overall health of the body.
