At a conference dedicated to the dermatology of dark skin, healthcare professionals shared with their colleagues the best practices to follow to improve the accuracy of diagnoses on dark skin. If certain diseases affect individuals regardless of their skin color, certain signs remain difficult to detect in black people for uninformed practitioners.
-1607082825.jpg "Dermatology: why black skins are treated differently from others")
- Black skins do not react the same way as white skins.
- Because of their strong pigmentation, it is possible that health professionals take time before detecting a disease, or even making the correct diagnosis.
- A university degree in diversity medicine has just opened these doors in order to make health professionals aware of the problems encountered by each ethnic origin.
In dermatology, black skins do not react in the same way as others. On the occasion of the Paris Dermatological Days which were held virtually from December 1 to 5, 2020, health professionals returned to these distinctions and the care to be adopted.
Misdiagnosis due to ignorance
If the dermatoses are frequent whatever the color of the skin and have similar natures, it is often difficult for an uninformed practitioner to make the correct diagnosis. Thus, on black skin, it is complicated to distinguish the necrosis of a part of the body with a melanoma for example, because in both cases, the blackness of the skin may appear similar. “On black skin, melanomas are mainly acrolentiginous melanomas, as in Asian people”, explains Emilie Baubion, dermatologist at the Martinique University Hospital.
If this distinction is so complex to make for dermatologists, it is because they are committed to having a global approach to the disease, and not specific to a particular type of skin. However, ethnic origins influence health, because we are not all equipped in the same way to face the disease. During the conference, Professor Antoine Mahé, dermatologist and venerologist in Colmar, insisted on the fact that it was necessary “adapt, when necessary, the care of patients according to their ethnic origins, in order to obtain universal quality of care”.
Because of their darker pigmentation, black skins are more difficult to apprehend. For example, the difficulty in assessing skin redness on dark skin is a reality that can falsify the diagnosis. In their discussions, the dermatologists particularly focused on cases of skin cancer. If they are rarer in black skin thanks to the better UV barrier conferred by the pigmentation, they are also more severe when they are discovered, in particular because of the delay in diagnosis.
A medicine of diversity
It is through all these aspects that the dermatologists present at this conference are campaigning for a much more global approach to health. Like other fields, health professionals may have limits on certain pathologies or types of populations, as well as an absence of a real repository of these problems in their patients.
The conference was in particular the occasion to present the creation this year of a university degree on the medicine of diversity at the Faculty of Medicine of Strasbourg and coordinated by Antoine Mahé. The aim of this training is to improve the skills of doctors in all fields, and not only in dermatology. With the rise of international population movements and globalization, this new approach of seeking solutions based on ethnic origins will be increasingly popular.
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