A Speaker Offers Pearls on Psoriasis and Kodachromes at SDPA 2022

Cynthia Trickett, PA-C, MPAS, talks about her sessions at the 2022 SDPA Fall Conference: psoriasis primer and a panel on kodachromes.

Transcript:

Cynthia Trickett, PA-C, MPAS:

My name is Cynthia Trickett. I'm a dermatology physician assistant in Dallas, Texas. And as far as the primer, I really wanted to make sure that my audience understood the importance of screening for psoriatic arthritis. But not only that, but how to do it. And also to understand the importance of psoriatic arthritis with other comorbidities, not just psoriasis, including inflammatory bowel disease in up itis. We're blessed to have a plethora of treatments. I mean, it's a cliche when we say it, but it is true, now's a good time to have psoriasis because we have so many options. I think we're probably going to have new biologic agents and new il 17. That should be approved. And hopefully, some new topical agents and now even more pediatric indications for oral because we really haven't had a great oral option for pediatrics for pediatric psoriasis. So we should have that very soon.

Well, I think it's always important to make sure that you know, we've been taught in school that you don't treat a lab, don't treat as a pathology, you've got to treat the patient. So you have to marry the data together. If your pathology says, Hey, this was a war and you were thinking, wait a second, I thought that was melanoma, you need to marry that information together and question the dermatopathologist. If you really don't think that that's right, not question them, like, Hey, you're wrong. It's like, Did I miss something? Because you said it was this and I was really thinking this and there's such a disconnect. So for a more complete picture, sometimes you have to involve the dermatopathologist even though they're like, you know, maybe even another city or another state behind a microscope and you don't see them, but you oftentimes have to interact with them. I think the other thing too, is that, you know, syphilis is not only not going away, but it's still steadily increasing in numbers and it is a great imitator. So if you're treating a person with a rash, and you're just not sure what it is we used to say thanks, scabies now, think scabies and think syphilis.