When is psoriasis considered mild versus severe?
The severity of you psoriasis is based on how widespread it is on your skin and how much it impacts your life. In this video, Melissa Levin, MD, explains that there are many treatment options available regardless if your psoriasis is mild or severe.
Transcript
There are different types of psoriasis. One type of psoriasis is called erythrodermic psoriasis. This is when your entire body is covered
in red, scaly, painful patches, and you can have a fever with this. [MUSIC PLAYING]
Many patients actually just have mild psoriasis where only a small area of the skin is involved. However, some patients have severe psoriasis.
When I think about severe psoriasis, three things come to mind. First of all, how much of your body's surface area is actually involved with psoriasis?
If a large part of your body is involved with psoriasis, you may not respond only to topical treatments and may need other treatment strategies
for your psoriasis to respond. The next factor that can make psoriasis more severe is how your psoriasis affects your quality of life.
So even though the palms and soles are relatively small body surface area involvement, when someone has psoriasis on their palms,
it actually can affect their quality of life and interfere with their daily activities. Lastly, there are different types of psoriasis.
One type of psoriasis is called erythrodermic psoriasis. This is when your entire body is covered
in red, scaly, painful patches, and you can have a fever with this. This is a life-threatening condition
and requires immediate medical attention by a physician. Treating moderate to severe psoriasis may require a combination of different treatment
strategies besides just topical medications. Your doctor may want to start you on phototherapy, which is also known as light therapy,
and/or systemic medications, which can be oral or injectable. It's important to discuss with your doctor,
depending on how severe your psoriasis is, to understand what is the best treatment choice of psoriasis.
It's important to keep in mind that there are many options for treating psoriasis, no matter how mild, moderate or severe your psoriasis is.
psoriasis
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