New Therapies in Pediatric Dermatology

At Maui Derm Hawaii 2023, Ilona Frieden, MD, Vice-Chair of Dermatology, and Chief of the Division of Pediatric Dermatology at the University of California, San Francisco, explores emerging new therapies for pediatrics, including new devices being used. She talked to Dermatology Times® about what to expect, at her presentation.

Transcript:

Ilona Frieden, MD: Hello, my name is Ilona Frieden, and I am a pediatric dermatologist at the University of California San Francisco. I have decided to talk about a couple of thingsfrom my presentations; one of them is about using devices that are on the market that can help make it easier to do procedures in children. Those include external cooling, you can buy cooling packs, and something called the Buzzy which is a vibration device. The idea of these kinds of things is to use them just proximal to where you're going to do a shot, for example, or injection of anesthesia. The gateway theory is that they will sort of block the pain pathways, so that you won't experience as much pain. And so these are now widely available. They're not particularly expensive. I would like dermatologists to be aware of them, not just for children, but for anyone who might be sensitive to getting injections and review a little bit about the literature about why they work and how to use them. I'm also going to talk in that same session about a medication that we have started to use a lot in dermatology and that's a topical beta blocker, timolol, which is licensed for use in glaucoma, but not licensed for use in skin disorders. And, the evolution, which is that when we discovered that beta blockers were highly effective for treating infantile hemangiomas, and those were systemic beta blockers, people immediately began to wonder about topical beta blockers,and timolol was the most readily available one. In fact, it does work pretty well for thin angiomas and I use it all the time. It also works for pyogenic granulomas or so-called lobular capillary hemangiomas, which are very common in childhood and in some adults as well. It also turns out that it has a lot of other uses for wound healing for leg ulcers, and for acne erythema. I just I'm going to review briefly the use of that interesting medication and how we might consider using it in other disorders.

Transcript edited for clarity