DERMATOPHILE
Warts, molluscum and things that go bump on the skin: a practical guide
Correspondence to:
For correspondence:
Dr P Lio
Children’s Hospital Boston, Fegan 6 Dermatology, 300 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115 USA; peter.lio@childrens.harvard.edu
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Evidence-based medicine is a wonderful thing. It keeps much of the quackery and snake oil that plagues our field at bay. Sometimes, however, it creates a paradox in which clinicians become trapped, lamenting that because there is no evidence, nothing can be done. I find this notion particularly concerning, both in terms of the danger of stagnation in medicine, and, more importantly, as a philosophy in treating actual human beings. In the immortal words of the renown dermatologist Walter B Shelley: "Therapeutic nihilism may be the correct way to approach the facts, but not the patient."1
Fortunately, none of these concerns applies to the treatment of warts and molluscum. People have used everything from duct tape to antacids to treat these common cutaneous maladies, and lack of evidence has not diminished the therapeutic enthusiasm in the least. As such, there are literally entire textbooks devoted to the subject.2
The present
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- Warts, molluscum and things that go bump on the skin: A practical guide
- Helen M Goodyear, et al.
- Education and Practice Online, 3 Sep 2007 [Full text]
- Warts and Molluscum: An impractical guide
- Stephen Roberts
- Education and Practice Online, 12 Sep 2007 [Full text]
- Author's Reply
- Peter A Lio
- Education and Practice Online, 13 Sep 2007 [Full text]
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