You're listening to shortwave from NPR.

Hey everybody, Maddie Sify here with shortwave reporter Emily Kwong.

Hi Emily.

Hey Maddie, so today I want to talk about the field of dermatology.

Oh that's the one treating hair, skin, nails.

Yeah it's an amazing field.

So skin is the largest organ of the body, we shed more than a pound of dry skin throughout

the year.

And it's a really visual field.

Okay so dermatologists like Dr. Jeanette Acue, rely on pictures to get a sense of what

a disease looks like so they can recognize it in the moment.

We're really scanning the patient from the minute we walk in the room and many of our

diagnoses, we actually know them from the door because wrote memorization of what things

look like is such a big part of our training.

Jeanette is chair of the Department of Dermatology at Howard University College of Medicine.

And like a lot of dermatologists, she was paying close attention last spring.

And COVID-19 was giving some patients skin rashes.

Do you remember that?

Yeah I do.

There were reports of COVID toes, like people's toes swelling up, it usually showed up with

more mild cases.

Yeah it was considered kind of a COVID red flag.

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