Although we should be judging the presidential candidates on their merits, many of my patients and colleagues have been buzzing about the candidates' skin this week. After Hillary's speech at the Democratic Convention, people couldn't stop talking about how well rested and good she looked. Her skin appeared tauter and smoother with a nice elevated cheek bone. She seems to be sporting the new, new face made popular by New York Magazine which is characterized by a serene forehead and lifted heart shape cheek lacking the convexities and troughs which harbor aging shadows. I don't treat the Senator but my of my patients achieve this plumpness through injections of various fillers such as hylauronic acids and poly-L-lactic acid.
Unfortunately, her husband's Bill looked a little worse for wear as he seemed to be suffering from a rosacea flare. A colleague of mine remarked that it looks as though his rosacea is progressing toward rhynothyma, a disfiguring overgrowth of skin on the nose. Fortunately treatment options do exist for the former president and other rosacea suffers. We routinely treat the redness of rosacea with pulsed dye and KTP lasers and recountour the rhynothymatous nose with electrosurgery.
John McCain has long been the focus of my dermatological colleagues because he has had 4 melanomas. His most serious one was diagnosed on his left temple in 2002 was 2 centimeters in diameter and 0.22 centimeters deep according to the New York Times When this lesion was removed with a wide margin of normal skin, lymph nodes in the temple and neck where evaluated for metastatic spread of melanoma cells. Fortunately, for the Senator, there was no evidence that the disease had already spread. He still needs to be closely monitored for recurrence of this melanoma as well as development of other skin cancers.
As far as the democratic nominee, Barack Obama's skin reminds me that even darker skin types can suffer from the sun's damaging rays. On both of his cheeks, fine freckles are evident and likely resulted from sun exposure in his youth. Although the melanin and darker skin types provides a natural sunscreen, people with darker skin still need to apply sunscreen to prevent sun damage and skin cancers.