Introduction

Fictional Current Cases will be presented on this Website as a pdf file approximately twice per month. Those wishing to participate in these Exercises will need to download the most currentAdobe Acrobat Reader™. The objective of these Exercises is to stimulate the participant to answer relevant and important questions about patient diagnosis, prognosis and management. Links will be provided to literature databases so that the participant can search for answers to the questions. During real-life interactive teaching sessions at SUNY Stony Brook, Dermatology residents, rotating residents and medical students will learn how to use the tools of Evidence-based Medicine to find the “best” answers. Subsequently the answers will be posted on the Website in the Last Case Answers pdf file. Virtual participants are invited to send comments, queries or suggestions to Richard.Clark@stonybrook.edu. After the Last Case Answers has been posted for approximately two weeks, it and the original Current Case will be archived under an appropriate disease category in the Archive Index. Nevertheless, the ultimate goal of these Website Learning Exercises is NOT to build an encyclopedic Dermatology database. Rather, we hope that these Learning Exercises will assist the participant in the development of information acquisition expertise for use in real-life patient care.