DERMFoot UK - Meeting Report
- Ivan Bristow
- 1 hour ago
- 3 min read
The first DERMfoot UK Meeting
The first collaboration between the Royal College of Podiatry (RCP) Dermatology in Podiatry Special Advisory Group (DiPSAG) and the Primary Care Dermatology Society (PCDS) was held at the Manchester Convention Centre in Central Manchester on 18th October.
DERMfoot attracted over 120 delegates from around the UK and Ireland with some delegates travelling from afar a field as Poland, the USA and Australia.
The line up for the day consisted of 8 speakers from the world of dermatology and podiatry covering a diverse array of topics. The event was opened by Dr Julian Peace, Chair of the PCDS, who had spent the last few weeks reviewing the recent literature to present some interesting cases including a bizarre image of an onychocryptosis rarely observed, labelled as “torpedo nails”. From here Drs Richard Turner and John Reed, from Oxford led a live skin club presenting images of patients’ feet and quizzing the audience as to their thoughts on diagnosis and management. A combination of humour, disagreement between the two and unusual presentations ensured everyone was kept awake!
Dr David de Berker followed. Many of you will know his work in the field of nail pathologies and the many hundreds of papers he has published throughout his career. A tale of ten nails demonstrated ten (unsurprisingly) pathologies that may be encountered in the toenails and served as a good reminder to always consider referring a single dystrophic nail to ensure it is not a malignancy.
Dr Bernard Ho from St George Hospital in London reminded everyone the importance of basic skin care – hygiene and emollients as the first step in maintaining a healthy skin barrier. He also emphasized that venous disease is very prevalent but easily managed in the early stages to prevent to sequalae of ulceration and venous eczema.
After lunch, Dr Julia Schofield, a consultant from Lincolnshire took the topic away from clinical but presented her work on whether AI is likely to be able to replace or assist in the early recognition of skin cancers, assisting clinicians against an avalanche of referrals. As she mentioned, the question is always “can AI outperform doctors in recognising skin cancer?” but we can never really know how often a dermatologist misses a cancer. The angle is more focussed on its accuracy and ability to recognise benign lesions, as removing the obviously benign in a 2 week wait queue considerably lightens load of clinicians allowing them to focus on the potentially malignant lesions, which are in much fewer numbers.
Dr Bryan Markinson, from Mount Sinai Hospital in New York gave an excellent overview of nail pigmentations, reminding us all we can never suppose anything. Ultimately, undertaking a timely and well placed biopsy can be the decisive action to detect nail cancers.
Dr Chin Whybrew, a GP from Cheltenham, whose also very good with a dermatoscope in the final session made a case for all podiatrists to be armed and trained in dermoscopy. The power of the device to add pertinent, useful information to a skin lesion diagnosis is paramount. Many dermoscopy users will understand this through the ridges and furrows rule which can be extremely reassuring in plantar pigmented lesions assessment. She went onto to highlight that only about a third of plantar melanoma show the parallel ridge pattern. Consequently, the BRAAF algorithm is a useful tool to further detect suspicious lesions which don’t play by the normal rules.
Overall, the meeting was great success, supported by the trade. Plans are already underway for next years meeting so make sure you are subscribed to my news letter here or, even better, a member of the Primary Care Dermatology Society.
Many thanks to the secretarial team of Siobhan, Carol, Holly and members of the executive committee who attended and supported this event. See you next year.
Planning is already underway for DERMFOOT 2026 - More news shortly.