Congratulations to MS4 student Brittany Maner for her recent publication The Magnitude of COVID-19’s Effect on the Timely Management of Melanoma and Nonmelanoma Skin Cancers in the April edition of the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology on ScienceDirect.
Due to various dermatologic conditions Brittany suffered as a child, she became interested in the field of dermatology and discovered there was more depth than the average person believes, “I realized that dermatology was so much more than just acne, psoriasis and atopic dermatitis management. It was more than cosmetic dermatology. It was surgery, cutaneous presentation of systemic diseases, infectious disease, and cancer detection and management,” said Brittany.
Serving as a dermatology research fellow, Brittany’s role was to obtain data through chart reviewing, EMR systems, and analysis of patients diagnosed with basal cell carcinomas, squamous cell carcinomas, and cutaneous melanomas. After comparing these findings, her team discovered that patients were not diagnosed with these malignancies in 2020 as they were in 2019. This led to the conclusion that their diagnosis delayed and explained why patients being admitted with further advanced cutaneous malignancies.
In the future, Brittany aspires to specialize in dermatology with a focus on patients of color, “I have noticed that there is a lack of focus on patients of color within the world of dermatology. Patients of color often present differently than those who are not patients of color and have different treatment regimens. I would also like to focus on patients of color with pigmentary disorders and developing patient-centered treatment regimens.