Skin Conditions

Here is a glossy of terms for skin conditions. Atrophic means thin. Wrinkled and blistered skin is fluid-filled. Bumps and crust or scabs indicate the formation of dried blood, pus or other skin fluid over a break in the skin. A cyst is a deep lesion that contains pus. Excoriation is a hollowed-out or linear area covered by a crust. Hives or wheals entail a pink swelling of the skin. Lichenification describes skin that has thickened. A macule is a smaller version of a patch or a flat discolored spot. A nodule or papule is a solid, raised bump. Raised bumps describe bumps that stick out above the skin surface whereas a patch is flat, and discolored. A pustule refers to a pimple, which is an inflamed lesion that looks like a pink bump. Scales are dead skin cells that appear as flakes or dry skin. A scar is fibrous tissue that has formed after a skin injury.

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Personalized Medicine

Personalized medicine is a medical model emphasizing the systematic use of information about an individual patient to select or optimize that patient's preventative and therapeutic care. Personalized medicine is the products and services that leverage the science of genomics and proteomics and capitalize on the trends toward wellness and consumerism to enable tailored approaches to prevention and care. Over the past century, medical care has centered on standards of care based on epidemiological studies of large cohorts. Personalized medicine seeks to provide an objective basis for consideration of such individual differences. Traditionally, personalized medicine has been limited to the consideration of a patient's family history, social circumstances, environment, and behaviors in tailoring individual care. Personalized medicine uses new methods of molecular analysis to manage a patient’s disease or predisposition toward a disease. It aims to achieve optimal medical outcomes by helping physicians and patients choose the disease management approaches likely to work best in the context of a patient’s genetic and environmental profile. Such approaches may include genetic screening programs that more precisely diagnose diseases and their sub-types, or help physicians select the type and dose of medication best suited to a certain group of patients. Personalized medicine is an extension of traditional approaches to understanding and treating illness. Since the beginning of the study of medicine, physicians have employed evidence found through observation to m