Re: I Need Help With Angular Cheilitis

My son has been dealing with this or a similar condition for a few months, to the point that he was embarrassed to be seen in public and it was literally ruining his life. He had been treated by 2 different primary care physicians and one dermatologist, with no real progress noted. He tried the process defined here and it seemed to help at first, but the improvement only lasted for a couple of days. He had read everything that he could find and was convinced that he had a chronic problem (which the dermatologist had also stated) and was feeling beyond hopeless.

After a bit of digging we decided that the right specialist to see for this was an infectious disease specialist. With a bit of luck, we managed to get him in to see one pretty quickly. This doctor looked what the other 3 doctors had prescribed and stated that he had stopped prescribing that stuff years ago. He prescribed an oral anti-fungal medicine and a topical anti-fungal cream and sent my son on his way. Improvement was noticeable within 24 hours, very significant improvement (he is no longer afraid to be seen in public and has re-joined the world) after 48 hours. While I guess the long term jury is still out, we are feeling pretty confident that this is going to work and that he will get his life back.

My point here is not to downplay the posted process, as it has clearly helped plenty of people and seemed to have initially helped my son. My point is to suggest that people not necessarily give up on the medical professionals. Sometimes you just have to keep pushing to get the best results. It is very disappointing that neither the second GP nor the dermatologist suggested escalating to a specialist, as he had seen each of them enough for them to see that their course of treatment was not working. To give them the benefit of the doubt they may have suggested a specialist or hit on the right drug on his next visit.

Good luck to you all! Tweet