SUN EXPOSURE VS RETINOIDS

What if your retinoid patients never remember sunscreen?

Click here for previous newsletters.

1. Counselling Conundrum: a real question from a patient

2. Concise Conclusion: a straight-forward patient-friendly answer 

3. Quick Wrap-up 

Clearly, there are nuances that may not be captured in this format. The goal here is to provide you with helpful counselling tips which often draw from multiple sources or those which are not commonly accessed by busy healthcare providers serving the community.

Counselling Conundrum: "I use tazarotene lotion on my face for acne and to improve my complexion. I know I should always wear sunscreen when using it, but I hardly ever remember. Should I stop using the tazarotene? What will happen?"

Concise Conclusion: No, I would not stop your tazarotene, but keep a few things in mind: sunscreen prevents UV damage of your skin, which is also very important for your complexion, and your skin is more susceptible to redness and irritation from UV rays because of the tazarotene. Stop use if you get significant irritation or a sunburn, restart once healed.

Quick Wrap-up: Remember that some retinoids, like tretinoin, are also more photolabile than others, which further increases the utility of sunscreen.

Dive Deeper

1) A Clinician’s Guide to Topical Retinoids - PMC

We hope you have found this useful. A reply to this email with any feedback or topic suggestion you may have would be greatly appreciated. Your input will be the key to making this newsletter the best it can be.