Elevate-Derm East Conference Day 4
The final day of the Elevate-Derm East Conference began with coffee service and reminders for the upcoming Elevate Derm West Conference, which is a little over three months away in Scottsdale, Arizona, this November.
The first lectures of the morning featured Dr. Jennifer Huang a pediatric dermatologist from Boston Children’s Hospital delivering two lectures about “Diagnosis and Management of Infantile Hemangiomas” and “Don’t Miss It! Important Skin Conditions in Children.” She reminded attendees that infantile hemangiomas are the most common benign soft tissue tumor of childhood and that most hemangiomas grow over the first year of life and then involute over several years. Most hemangiomas do not require intervention. She also emphasized the importance of ruling out infection in neonates with blisters. Once ruled out, she encouraged attendees to consider non-infectious causes of neonatal blistering, like those of genetic (epidermolysis bullosa, incontinentia pigmenti, bullous forms of ichthyosis) or autoimmune (pemphigoid gestationes, bullous pemphigoid) origins.
After breakfast, Dr. Adam Lipworth delivered the final lecture on “Reducing Diagnostic Error in Dermatology: A Bayesian Approach.” His lecture introduced Bayes Theorem as a means of determining conditional probabilities and described the likelihood of what you want to know (hypothesized diagnosis) given data that you have available. Prior probabilities are critically important, especially when inferring information from data. Another point he made was that Confirmation bias occurs when we allow the patient's history to influence how we perceive the exam, which should be independent.
The well-rounded conference concluded at the end of the morning as attendees traveled back home, ready to live out all the great pearls we learned in the lecture, and look forward to applying them to clinical practice.
