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Wait For Botox Shorter Than Cancer Screens

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By NATASHA SINGER, The New York Times

Published: September 2, 2007

Patients seeking an appointment with a dermatologist to ask about a potentially cancerous mole have to wait substantially longer than those seeking Botox for wrinkles, a study published online last week by The Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology said.

Researchers reported that dermatologists in several cities offered a typical wait of eight days for a cosmetic patient wanting Botox to smooth wrinkles, compared with a typical wait of 26 days for a patient requesting evaluation of a changing mole, a possible indicator of skin cancer.

'The difference in wait times between medical dermatology and cosmetic dermatology patients is clearly real,' said Jack S. Resneck Jr., the study's lead author and an assistant professor of dermatology at the medical school of the University of California, San Francisco. 'We need to look further and figure out what is leading to shorter wait times for cosmetic patients.'

In Boston, the median Botox wait was 13 days, versus 68 days for a mole examination. In Seattle, the median Botox wait was 7 1/2 days, compared with 35 days for a changing mole.

The study, in which a researcher posing as a patient called every board-certified dermatologist in the cities being studied, did not examine the possible causes for the varying times.

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