Hi I’m Dr. Bobby Mansouri and I’m a board certified dermatologist practicing in Tyler Texas today we’re talking about psoriasis. So psoriasis is a rash that can affect any part of your body. Psoriasis can look like a lot of different things – some people think they have eczema some people might think they have ringworm psoriasis can look like both of them so one of the most important things whether you have psoriasis or not it’s really important for you to get in to see a board-certified dermatologist to see if you do have psoriasis. If you have psoriasis we usually talk to you about what that means. It’s a chronic condition meaning you’re going to have it for the rest of your life. It tends to run in families so you may know one or two other family members that has rashy scaly skin in certain areas. Maybe they knew they had psoriasis maybe they didn’t depending on how severe your psoriasis is; how many parts of your body it affects; how much it affects your life; we tend to plan your management based on that. If you just have a few body locations that are affected we tend to give you topical creams, ointments, lotions, solutions that can help reduce that inflammation in the skin and take the rash away. If you have moderate to severe disease which means more of your body surface is covered with psoriasis we tend to start thinking about other treatments that can affect more of your body. So whether that’s photo therapy or narrowband UVB where we shine lights on you to get rid of psoriasis, whether it’s oral medications, whether it’s a new class of injectable medications called biologics, which really help our moderate-to-severe patients, we can go over all of those things with you in person at an appointment. The other really nice thing about it is that after we diagnose you and we have you controlled and we’re seeing you at follow-up appointments because again this is a chronic disease, now as part of our care here at U.S. Dermatology Partners we can see you via virtual visit or telehealth visit. So every six months when we’re checking in to make sure your psoriasis is doing okay and still well controlled you can do it from the comfort of your own home we can do it from here and we can get you in whenever you need and is convenient for you. So this is really big news for us it’s a big deal to be able to provide that that new approach for you to really make things fit better with your schedule.
