Rural melanoma patients in Maryland do not present with more advanced disease than urban patients.

Purpose: Rural populations have higher poverty rates, lower educational attainment, higher smoking rates, lower rates of health insurance, higher proportions of elderly individuals, decreased access to health services including dermatology, higher all-cause mortality, and higher mortality from melanoma. Despite these disparities, rural patients have not been adequately studied within the dermatologic literature, particularly at geographic units smaller than the county level.

Methods: We used zip codes and Rural Urban Commuting Area (RUCA) codes to conduct a cross-sectional study on the prevalence and severity of melanoma among 31,750 rural versus urban patients treated by the Johns Hopkins Department of Dermatology from January, 2016 to June, 2017.

Antibiotic sensitivity and clinical outcomes in staphylococcal scalded skin syndrome.

Staphylococcal scalded skin syndrome causes widespread skin denudation primarily in infants < 1 year old. Selection of empiric therapy is complicated by rising rates of antibiotic resistance in community-acquired staphylococcal infections. Consistent with a previous study, this retrospective review found that SSSS-associated isolates were more likely to be clindamycin-resistant and less likely to be methicillin-resistant compared to overall staphylococcal infections.

Topical timolol as adjunct therapy to shorten oral propranolol therapy for infantile hemangiomas.

Background/objectives: First-line therapy for infantile hemangiomas (IH) is oral propranolol, a systemic beta-blocker with the risk of rare but serious adverse effects. Topical timolol presents an attractive off-label alternative with good tolerability, but sequential therapy with propranolol followed by timolol is not well studied. Here, we report effects of topical timolol preceding or following oral propranolol as adjunct therapy for IH.

Diffuse lamellar keratitis after epi-off corneal crosslinking: An under-recognized complication?

Purpose: To report diffuse lamellar keratitis (DLK) occurring in an eye that underwent epithelium-off (epi-off) corneal cross-linking (CXL) as a treatment for post-surgical ectasia and the successful treatment of progressive ectasia with a novel epi-on CXL and conductive keratoplasty (CK) treatment.

Observations: A 42-year-old man presented with corneal ectasia in his right eye 3 years after laser in situ keratomileusis (LASIK) surgery. He underwent epi-off corneal CXL using the Dresden protocol.

Unplanned 30-day hospital readmission as a quality measure in gynecologic oncology.

Objectives: Thirty-day readmission is used as a quality measure for patient care and Medicare-based hospital reimbursement. The primary study objective was to describe the 30-day readmission rate to an academic gynecologic oncology service. Secondary objectives were to identify risk factors and costs related to readmission.