Insurances

---

We are off of Sunrise Valley Drive, across from Cross School Road and up the hill from Atlantic Union Bank. We are on the 5th Floor. Our address is 1801 Robert Fulton Drive Suite 520, Reston, VA 20191

Dr. Maithily A Nandedkar is a board-certified fellow of the American Academy of Dermatology. She has over 22 years of experience and has completed extensive training in dermatology. She is an expert in mystery diagnoses and dermatologic manifestations of systemic diseases.  Jessica Beliveau PA-C is  a board certified Physician Assistant who works in conjunction with Dr. Nandedkar using a full team approach for all patient care. The Full team approach ensures patients get the care they need when they need it. 

If you have a skin emergency, please call our office immediately at 703-860-1818 for a same day next day within the week appointment. We will not do a full skin exam but will address your spot.  In the case of a life-threatening emergency, please call 911 or visit your nearest emergency room.

All our full skin exams are 30 minutes long. We check your skin from the scalp to the bottom of your feet and even between your toes. We use a dermatoscope, which is a like a hand held microscope, to get a detailed view of your moles and other spots. We work as a team, so you may see the Physician Assistant first and then the doctor or vice versa. We will look at the front genitalia, if requested. We do look between buttock folds to make sure there is no cancer hiding. Please note: We do not do biopsies at the time of the full skin exam to allow time for discussion regarding the risks, benefits, alternatives and expectations to biopsy and subsequent possible treatment. Rest assured, we will see you quickly for biopsies of any suspicious site. We will take many pictures and encourage you to read our notes via your portal. If you have any additional concerns at the time of your full skin exam, please let front desk staff know when you are scheduling so that they can schedule you accordingly.

Yes, Professional Dermatology Care, PC offers telemedicine appointments for select services. Please contact us to see if your appointment is eligible for telemedicine.

There are two types of biopsies: A tangential/shave biopsy or a punch biopsy. 

By definition, the biopsy means we take a small piece of skin and send it to pathology to determine if it is a benign or cancerous. A shave biopsy means we take a small shaving of the spot to determine its nature. A punch biopsy means we remove mole by coring it out (like an apple core but much smaller) so we can determine its depth. This will require stitches that need to be removed in 5-10 days depending on the location of the biopsy. 

The big question is  always "will it hurt?" We'd love to say NO but we can't. We can say, very rarely!  Pain is often technique dependent. We try our best to minimize any pain by using good scratch technique to distract from the pain. We have been fairly successful at minimizing the pain you will feel. We inject a numbing agent called lidocaine so when we remove the spot it should hurt very little. The chemical cautery stings a little but that is usually the extent of the pain. 

Yes, anytime skin is removed it can scar but doing good quality wound care can minimize scarring. Moist wounds heal faster with less scarring so using vaseline and a bandage helps a lot. After a biopsy, keep the bandage that we place on the site for as long as you can. Shower with it! Pat dry and carry on. Only change the bandage once it falls off on its own. This alone minimizes the scar and keeps the site from getting infected because the site is clean under the bandage we applied at the time of the procedure. 

There are many ways to treat actinic keratoses (pre-cancers) from 5-Flurouracil (5-FU) cream to liquid nitrogen (LN2) to medical grade trichloroacetic acid (TCA) peels. Some actinics are pink and some are pigmented and can be very dark brown mimicking melanoma. A melanoma should not be treated with liquid nitrogen because although the pigment may seem gone, the melanoma cells will remain but now are more difficult to detect because they are pink rather than black. In patients who have so many spots, distinguishing non melanoma skin cancers from melanomas can be quite difficult. Therefore, we try to clear the field of pre-cancers using broader treatments like ALA-PDT (see below)  or TCA Peels so we can better detect a melanoma. We can also use combination treatments such as 5-FU and Imiquimod and TCA or ALA-PDT. There are numerous options and we will discuss what we believe is the best option for you based on your skin type. No one size fits all. 

Patient portal instructions:

Your username should be your email. If you ask, we can send you a link to access your portal. You must use Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox as a browser. If you have forgotten your password, use the forget password link on the login page to reset your password. https://professionaldermatologycare.ema.md/ema/Login.action

To access a PDF of your office visit notes, select “Past Appointments.” You should see a blue hyperlink of past appointment dates. Click on the blue links for the appointment date you would like to see notes from. You will see a diagnoses code and a plan selected in bold with generalized counseling under the plan. Not all generalized counseling may apply to your specific visit as these are templates created for the diagnosis. To see notes specific to your visit, scroll to the “Note:” section towards the bottom of the page. Images taken are at the very bottom of the page. See the link above to access the portal directly.