Psoriasis Management and Phototherapy Insights

Kicking off Fall Dermatology Week 2023, Joel M. Gelfand, MD, MSCE, and Steven R. Feldman, MD, PhD, took a deeper dive into psoriasis management and evaluated the safety of therapeutics for psoriasis, during their session, “Better Care for Psoriasis Patients.”

To start, Dr Gelfand stated, “Our objectives are to become more familiar with certain research designs we use to evaluate the safety of therapeutics for psoriasis, recognize the role narrowband phototherapy has in contemporary management of people with psoriasis, [and] identify gaps in adherence with psoriasis treatment and ways of improving adherence for our patients.”

He shared that there are a variety of designs in epidemiology, including making a hypothesis, case reports, case series, and cross-sectional studies. Additionally, there are analytical designs, case control studies, cohort studies, and clinical trials. He noted that these are designed to test hypotheses of associations.

For his portion, Dr Feldman jumped into the use of phototherapy for patients with psoriasis.

Reviewing one study he stated, “It was a study where we used home phototherapy in combination with acitretin, and you could see [patients’] use of acitretin steadily went down over time. But, shockingly, [patients used] home phototherapy 2 to 3 times a week pretty consistently. It makes me think you can't draw a lot of predictions about what adherence is going to be like. You really have to see what happens.”

Bouncing off this, Dr Gelfand reminded attendees that the American Academy of Dermatology guidelines of care are available for how to dose phototherapy appropriately.

“The key thing you want to do is what's called erythemogenic dosing. [Patients are] getting enough of a dose to cause a little bit of transient erythema on the skin. You can follow the protocol if you have this in your office. It's a very effective and well tolerated way to manage this disease,” he concluded.

For more meeting coverage, visit the Fall Dermatology Week 2023 newsroom.

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Reference
Feldman S Gelfand J. Better care for psoriasis patients. Presented at: Dermatology Week 2023; September 20-23, 2023; Virtual.