Editor's Message: Pediatric Dermatology: An Important Subspecialty - By Julie Neville, M.D. This edition of Skin & Aging focuses on pediatric dermatology. Organized in 1975, the Society for Pediatric Dermatology has focused on promoting the care, research, and education of skin disease in children. Although initially most pediatric dermatologists faced limited employment opportunities and were treating children only as a small portion of their practice, this field has grown over the past 20 years to become an established subspecialty of dermatology. A recent article by Hester et. al. in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology looked at the current demand for pediatric dermatologists as determined by surveys sent to dermatology residency programs. They found that almost half of the departments surveyed employed a full-time pediatric dermatologist and 24 programs (26% of those surveyed) have attempted to recruit one for an average of 16 months. Additionally, while 10 programs reported having pediatric dermatology fellowships, only 6 fellows were currently in training.        While the number of current fellows will not meet the current demand, the number of certified pediatric dermatologists will likely decrease as the Society for Pediatric Dermatology implements a board certification in their field in 2004. Until this year, pediatricians who completed a dermatology residency or dermatology residents who finished training and spent at least 5 years seeing predominately pediatric patients were board eligible. Now, only those dermatologists who complete a pediatric dermatology fellowship will be eligible to take the board examination.        Given the low number of fellows in training and the new requirements restricting the eligibility of dermatologists to take the certifying exam, pediatric dermatologists may find a shortage of board certified colleagues. These changes are occurring while the demand for physicians to care for pediatric cutaneous complaints continues to be substantial, with around 24% of all pediatric patient visits are made for this reason. In 1990, this amounted to an estimated 10 million total visits, with 2.1 million of these seen by dermatologists. Although most dermatologists continue to see both children and adults, the need for pediatric dermatologists is significant and as a result, pediatric dermatology has established itself as an important subspecialty of dermatology. Julie Neville, M.D. Skin & Aging - ISSN: 1096-0120 - Volume 12 - Issue 11 - November 2004 - Pages: 6 - 7