Healthy Skin

What You Can Expect from Your Dermatologist

What Is Dermatology?

 

Dermatology is the area of medicine that diagnoses and treats dermatology skin conditions. Treating conditions that affect your hair and nails also falls under a dermatologist’s specialty.

 

There are over 3,000 skin conditions known in the field of dermatology including acne, eczema, psoriasis, melanoma, and many more.


What Skin Conditions Do Dermatologists Treat?

 

Dermatologists are trained to treat thousands of skin, hair, and nail conditions. Some of the most common include:

 

Acne: Acne is a skin condition mostly found in teenagers and young adults, it occurs when hair follicles plug with oil and dead skin cells. Acne can appear as blackheads, red bumps, and whiteheads.

 

Actinic Keratosis: Actinic keratosis is a scaly patch on your skin that develops over time from sun exposure. Mostly found on the back of hands, forearms, scalp, neck, lips, and face, these patches enlarge slowly on the skin.

 

Eczema: Eczema is an inflammatory skin disorder that results in red, dry, and itchy skin. Also called dermatitis, eczema can result in skin bleeding and crusting over in the folds of the arms, back of the knees, wrists, and hands.

 

Fungal Infections: A fungal infection is a skin disease caused by a fungus. There are millions of types of fungi that are found on plants, household surfaces, on your skin, and in dirt. Some of the different species of fungi can cause skin problems like rashes or bumps.

 

Psoriasis: Psoriasis is an autoimmune disease that causes raised, red, scaly patches to appear on the skin. It can affect any part of the body but typically appears behind elbows and knees, scalp, back, face, hands, and feet.

 

Rosacea: Rosacea is a skin condition that causes redness and small red bumps on the face. Signs and symptoms can come and go for months at a time. The key symptoms of rosacea are swollen red bumps coupled with visible blood vessels on the face. If not treated it typically worsens over time.

 

After your dermatologist diagnoses you with a condition, they will come up with a treatment plan specifically for you. Typically, treatment will include prescription products or medications that can be picked up at your dermatology pharmacy. Depending on what you are suffering from, your dermatologist may also perform a procedure to treat the condition.

 


What Procedures do Dermatologists Perform?

 

Biopsies: A biopsy is a procedure in which your dermatologist will remove part of your skin to examine it and determine whether it is cancerous or not.

 

Laser Therapy: Some dermatologists perform laser therapy to expose your skin to controlled levels of artificial light. Typically, laser therapy is used to remove growths, sunspots, scars, or unwanted hair.

 

Surgical Excision: This excision is performed to remove skin growths including moles, warts, and skin tags.

 

Mohs Surgery: This surgery removes skin tissue around a cancerous tumor. The dermatologist will look for cancer cells after the removal of tissue. The surgery is complete once there are no more cancer cells.

 

Dermabrasion: A dermabrasion is a procedure that exfoliates the top layer of skin to remove and reduce the appearance of acne scars, discolored patches, fine lines, and wrinkles.

 

 

When to Look for and How to Find a Dermatologist

If you are not struggling with obvious symptoms, you should visit your dermatologist annually to ensure you have no possible signs of skin cancer.

However, if you are struggling with symptoms of a skin condition, scheduling an appointment with your dermatologist to treat the condition is necessary. Examples of symptoms include:

  • Skin rashes
  • Itchy, flaky skin
  • Acne
  • Moles, warts, or skin tags
  • Hair loss
  • Fingernail issues (discoloration or breaking)
  • New sunspots (especially ones that blood or become very dark)

When scheduling an appointment with a dermatologist, make sure that your doctor is board certified by the American Academy of Dermatology and is recommended by your primary care physician to ensure you will be getting quality care.

At Apotheco Pharmacy, we work with your dermatologist to provide you with the treatment you need to improve or cure any skin condition you may be struggling with at the lowest possible cost to you!

This blog is based on research and/or other scientific articles and is written by our experienced Chief Strategy Officer and Pharmacist, Ronak Desai. This blog is fact checked by our educated Pharmacist in Charge, Darshan Patel, who additionally runs our Apotheco Manhattan location.

Here at Apotheco Pharmacy Group, our goal is to provide the most up to date and accurate information on health and dermatology related topics. We do this to ensure our readers can make informed decisions based on factual content. All blogs undergo an extensive review process before posted.

This blog contains trusted sources. All sources are listed at the bottom of this article with hyperlinks that take you directly to the source.