News

Bridgewater, N.J. - Results of a new study suggest that atopic dermatitis may increase the risk of cancer, including melanoma, Reuters Health reports.

Washington - President Barack Obama has signed a bill that delays until Dec. 1 a previously approved 21 percent cut in Medicare payments, the Associated Press reports.

Bethesda, Md. - National Cancer Institute researchers say the incidence of cutaneous appendageal carcinomas - cancers of the sweat glands and hair follicles - has increased since the late 1970s, MedPageToday.com reports.

Mississauga, Ontario - Biovail, Canada’s largest pharmaceutical firm, plans to purchase Valeant Pharmaceuticals, based in Aliso Viejo, Calif., for about $3.3 billion, according to in-Pharmatechnologist.com.

Weighing The Impact : New healthcare reform law’s omissions, provisions raise concerns, derms say SGR, No fix yet : Congress again delays action on Medicare reimbursement formula Special Report : Fillers & Toxins

Adverse events (AEs) following dermatologic procedures are a real possibility. However, the frequency of these events in dermatologic practice remains an unknown. Only after establishing which AEs occur and how often they appear can dermatologists begin to put forth sound preventive strategies to keep these unwanted events to a minimum, improving surgical outcomes in patients.

Clinicians have to apply different ratios when using Dysport (abobotulinumtoxinA, Medicis) in their patients, according to a clinical professor of dermatology at the University of California School of Medicine, San Francisco.

The approval pathway created for follow-on biologic drugs, also called biosimilars, in the new healthcare reform package raises concerns related to drug prices and quality, dermatologists say. The Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act gives originators of biologic drugs 12 years of data exclusivity.

If you've been on the fence about purchasing an electronic health record (EHR) for your dermatology practice, it's time to make your move. The federal government has pledged billions of dollars to finance the automation of medical practices. Also working in your favor now are the advances in the technology behind these sytems; today's systems are much better than what you could find just 12 or 18 months ago.

Payments or gifts of $10 or more to physicians from the pharmaceutical industry will be listed on a public website beginning Sept. 30, 2013, under the recently passed federal healthcare reform law. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will post virtually all payments of $10 or more made to physicians or teaching hospitals by manufacturers of drugs, products or supplies covered under Medicare or Medicaid.

Approved by the Food and Drug Administration, a number of fillers containing lidocaine hit the market this spring and are quickly coming into fairly widespread use. Arielle Kauvar, M.D., director of the New York Laser & Skin Care Center, says she started using them in March, and unless a patient is allergic to lidocaine, she sees no reason now to use fillers without the anesthetic already included.

The newly passed federal healthcare legislation mandates changes that will impact dermatology practices to greater or lesser degrees, depending on practice size, patient base and other factors. But dermatologists say they're most concerned about what the legislation omits: an explanation of how the new Medicare Independent Payment Advisory Board will function, and a fix for Medicare's sustainable growth rate formula.

Efficacy and safety results of phase 2 studies provide support for undertaking pivotal trials investigating an oncolytic vaccine therapy, granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF)-encoding oncolytic herpes simplex virus (OncoVEX GM-CSF, BioVex), for treating metastatic melanoma (MM) and head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (SCC).

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) colonization has become an increasingly common occurrence. Most people with frequent MRSA infections harbor the organism in their nose, developing skin infections when the organism is placed into open wounds. The best way to prevent the spread of MRSA when shaving is to eradicate the source of the infection.

With a variety of dermal fillers now available to dermatologists, it may be difficult to choose the right one. When a patient comes it, it is best to discuss what changes he or she is trying to achieve, says Ruth Tedaldi, M.D., who practices in Wellesley, Mass.

Frances J. Storrs, M.D., tells it like it is, sees the humor in it, then laughs a hearty laugh. She was the first woman to complete the dermatology residency at Oregon Health and Science University, graduating in 1968. Now professor emerita of dermatology and director of the Dermatology Contact Clinic at Oregon Health and Science University, Dr. Storrs has undeniably earned respect in a specialty that early in her career was dominated by men.

A six-month plan to forestall Medicare reimbursement cuts yet again - a proposal pending in the Senate at press time - is the latest in a series of delays that continues to leave dermatologists and other physicians frustrated.

New fillers, including even more hyaluronic acid fillers, as well as new toxins are expected to enter the U.S. market within the next year, according to William Philip Werschler, M.D., F.A.A.D., assistant professor of clinical medicine and dermatology, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle.

Treating chin dimpling can be a challenge, but a simple therapeutic approach using botulinum toxin coupled with a change in mimicking habits by the patient proves to relax the musculature in the chin area, resulting in signficiant, lasting Aesthetic improvements.

Photoaging of the neck and chest is a common concern among patients. One of the most frequent clinical presentations is poikiloderma of Civatte (PC). First described by French dermatologist Achille Civatte in 1923, it is characterized by brown to pink patches of superficial atrophy, telangiectasia and mottled hyper- and hypopigmentation.

One of the main rallying cries for passage of healthcare reform legislation was to improve access to healthcare for the 47 million (or 32 million, depending on which source you happen to read) Americans who previously didn't have health insurance. Legislation that corrects this obvious shortcoming of our healthcare system is certainly welcomed. However, does this law accomplish that goal?

Some of the most conservative among us tend to be suspicious of "new" ways to invest our money. Perhaps that's why exchange-traded funds (ETFs) got off to a slow start when they were introduced back in the 1990s. But that's history now; ETFs are growing in popularity with an ever-increasing ferocity.

As surely as summer follows spring, every year, questions about the effectiveness of sunscreens flourish. This year, the Environmental Working Group, a public health watchdog organization in Washington, has raised the issue not only of sunscreens not doing the job they're supposed to, but of these products contributing to the spread and seriousness of skin cancers.

Vascular birthmarks are very ccommon in newborns, and some varieties affect up to 50 percent of babies. But the challenge for dermatologists can be the early diagnosis and the ability to distinguish the subtle differences between a banal birthmark and one that calls for quick action.

Medical applications were not part of the vision held by the earliest laser pioneers, but in 2010, which marks the 50th anniversary of the first laser, this technology represents an essential tool for many medical specialties, including dermatology.

Newer technologies including total-body photography, digital dermascopy, reflectance confocal microscopy (RCM) and epidermal genetic information retrieval (EGIR) show promise as tools for improving early diagnosis of melanoma, experts say.

Dr. Eczema has a very large dermatology practice and performs studies on new treatments for a variety of dermatoses. Recently, one of the pharmaceutical companies with which Dr. Eczema works contacted his research nurse to ask her to provide a copy of all of this electronic data, which she does. A former research patient finds out and has an attorney inform Dr. Eczema he will sue for a HIPAA violation unless he settles with his client for $100,000.

That state of affairs that we call "retirement" in this country is now entering what I call Phase III. In Phase I, retirement for most people meant simply that they no longer were able to work due to age or illness. The fortunate ones who accumulated enough money to support themselves comfortably when they grew too old to work were in the minority. Back then, in our largely agrarian economy, the best that many Americans could look forward to was living out old age in the homes of their children.

The recent Medicare cuts in reimbursements for most physicians go from frustrating to downright scary. Layer on top of this ramifications of the newly enacted healthcare reform, and it starts to feel like the federal government is determined to make it difficult for physicians to prosper.

Chicago - Dermatologist Marc Boddicker, M.D., is a volunteer faculty member at John Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County in Chicago. But what makes that especially noteworthy is the fact that he flies his private plane once a month some 900 miles from his practice in Rapid City, S.D., to the inner city Cook County hospital.