Orit Markowitz, MD: Innovative Skin Cancer Treatments

During this HCPLive interview, Orit Markowitz, MD, spoke about some of the major takeaways from her presentation ‘Innovative Skin Cancer Treatments: Beyond the Surgical Cut,’ as well as technologies she personally uses in her own practice.

In her background, Markowitz is known for her work as a leading dermatologist, a skin cancer specialist, and as CEO and founder of OptiSkin Medical in New York City.

Markowitz’s lecture, alongside Brad Glick, DO, MPH, was presented at the Society of Dermatology Physician Assistants (SDPA) 2023 Annual Summer Dermatology Conference. In their shared talk, Glick and Markowitz spoke on contemporary technologies that facilitate the earliest cancer detection.

“I founded my practice for the purpose of leaving patients scar free,” Markowitz explained early on. “And I utilize multiple imaging devices as well as non ablative laser modalities, such as the Prima Laser or the Fraxel Dual, and we also combined with some of the newer technologies from Europe, such as deepLive or LC-OCT, optical coherence tomography, reflectance, confocal, microscopy, dermoscopy.”

She went on to describe the ways in which her practice uses up-to-date techniques to prevent scarring in patients.

“So all of the non-invasive tools are often utilized along with some oral therapies and topicals, and so forth, to try our best to manage patients so that they can have minimal to no scarring, but also that we can detect things even sometimes, before they even become skin cancer,” Markowitz said. “And of course, then we have all the wonderful opportunities for field therapies in managing those diseases as well.”

Later in the interview, Markowitz talked more specifically about the takeaways from she and Glick’s lecture.

“So I think that it's important to remember that we have to think about the patient as we would ourselves,” she said. “So we automatically assume that if a patient comes in with a very aggressive tumor, that we have no options and therefore, we just have to say to the patient, ‘good luck.’”

Markowtiz went on to explain that she believes it is important to be aware of what is available, technology-wise, so that clinicians may decide what they wish to implement.

For more information on the presentation’s contents, view the full interview above.

The quotes contained in this description were edited for clarity.