Lakeside Dermatology calls Sebring, FL, and Winter Haven, FL, home. Dr. Michael Rogers, Dr. Brooke Rogers, Dr. Alex Kennon, and Barbara Ross, APRN-C direct this practice and see patients daily for various skin conditions.
Our doctors are some of Florida's leading board-certified dermatology doctors and surgeons. They are here today to talk about psoriasis.
What Is Psoriasis and Its Causes?
The common signs of psoriasis are raised plaques and scales on your skin. While psoriasis is treatable and manageable, it is not cureable. You will have flare-ups and periods of remission with little to no symptoms.
Rest assured, you are not contagious, and you cannot contact this from another person.
Psoriasis does not consider age, gender, culture, or skin color. Medical research suggests that it develops due to a malfunction in the immune system, which creates inflammation throughout the body and causes cells to overgrow.
There are different types of psoriasis, each with its specific symptoms, depending on the body location in which it develops. You can develop more than one type at a time; however, it is rare. The following are the various types.
Plaque
- Most commonly, develops red lesions, silvery scales, and sometimes painful
Guttate
- Affects children and younger adults on arms, legs, and torso; small, red, scaly spots caused by bacterial infection
Inverse
- Develops red, inflamed skin at body creases, under breasts, in armpits, and around genitals; worsens with friction and skin sweating; may develop yeast or bacterial infection
Pustular
- Anyone develops this type, usually affects older adults after 50; red skin patches, inflamed, pus-filled bumps; develops quickly, severe, and life-threatening; immediate medical attention as a hospital inpatient.
Erythrodermic
- Red rash throughout the body, fever, chills, dehydration, life-threatening, seek immediate medical attention, lifelong treatment to decrease complications
Nail
- Damaged nails with pitting, discoloration, dents, splits, lifted nails; come with plaque psoriasis
Psoriatic Arthritis
- Inflammation of the joints, tendons, ligaments, and bone causes pain, stiffness, and swelling; no cure, but manageable with treatment.
Other symptoms include,
- Bleeding/oozing fluid
- Burning
- Pitted/thickened nails
- Rapid heartbeat
- Peeling skin
- Joint, finger, toe swelling
- Heel pain
- Chronic fatigue
- Eye inflammation
This condition can attack the face, genitals, hands, feet, knees, elbows, nails, scalp, trunk, under breasts, and armpits.
Our doctors may order bloodwork or skin biopsy and review current medications and physical and mental history.
Treatment
Treatment may include prescription creams, ointments, biological drug therapies, and light therapy.
Answers to the Heartbreak of Psoriasis!
If you are suffering from unrelenting outbreaks of psoriasis, don't suffer another day. Call Dr. Rodgers or Dr. Kennon at Lakeside Dermatology in Sebring, FL, at (863) 385-7183 and Winter Haven, FL, at (863) 293-7546 to schedule your psoriasis consultation.
We want to help you manage this pesky and often painful skin condition.