photo by Karen Pulfer Focht
Dr. Purvisha Patel, Advanced Dermatology and Skin Cancer Associates
Editor's Note: Every year, this magazine presents its list of the Top Doctors in Memphis. The physicians are selected by Castle Connolly, a healthcare research company and the official source for Top Doctors for the past 25 years. Castle Connolly’s established nomination survey, research, screening and selection process, under the direction of an MD, involves thousands of physicians as well as academic medical centers, specialty hospitals, and regional and community hospitals all across the nation. The complete list of more than 250 Top Doctors in Memphis, arranged by 45 specialties, is published in the June/July issue of Memphis magazine.
Born in London, Dr. Purvisha Patel spent most of her first 12 years in Wales before her parents — refugees from Uganda — seized an opportunity to run a motel in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. She spent her formative years in Ashland, Virginia, and attended the University of Virginia as both an undergraduate and medical student. She completed her dermatology training at the UT Health Science Center in Memphis, where she served her residency under Dr. William Rosenberg. (“Dr. Rosenberg was an amazing thinker,” says Patel. “He had skin-care lines and patents, which inspired my own career.”)
“As an immigrant family, [my parents] thought being a doctor was the ultimate career choice,” she says. “Seeing my parents work so hard, never having a vacation … you want to do whatever it takes to make them happy. I loved science, and I was good at it. I often took care of our grandparents, who would come and live with us. I was a caregiver, so doing medicine flowed naturally from that.”
Patel describes her decision to specialize in dermatology as a “eureka moment,” one that came with a serious dose of heartache. “My parents were thinking cardiology or neurosurgery, maybe pediatrics,” she says. “Nobody [in my family] really knew what dermatology was. But skin is the largest organ in the body. I feel like a Sherlock Holmes of medicine. I can tell if a patient is vitamin-deficient, if they have thyroid disease, diabetes, if they’re taking their medicine. I can see what people are doing for hobbies, if they’re swimming in a pool, what kind of pets they have. Before we had lab tests, this was medicine. Looking at a person’s body for signs and symptoms of disease.”
“A patient gets to see a disease go away,” Patel emphasizes, “and that’s really gratifying. We get to see the progress of treatment. It’s super fun.”
Patel’s father died at age 57 from skin cancer, just as she was choosing her specialty. “I chose to be a skin-cancer surgeon,” she reflects, “when my dad looked at me and asked, ‘You could have gotten rid of this before it spread?’ That’s how I knew. It was an easy decision.”
Dermatology offers about the closest thing a doctor can find to instant results. An ailment can be diagnosed, addressed, and often removed in a single visit. “A patient gets to see a disease go away,” Patel emphasizes, “and that’s really gratifying. We get to see the progress of treatment. It’s super fun.”
Reflecting on two decades as a dermatologist, Patel notes advances in technology — as with any field of medicine — but stands by the same general approach she studied at the turn of the century. "When it comes to skin cancer," she explains, "the answer is to still take it out. The procedure I do most — micrographic surgery — is considered cutting-edge, but it hasn't changed much since I left my training. When it comes to medicine, we’re using immunotherapies now for melanoma treatment. Science has changed the field, but it’s still kind of ancient in its roots."
The coronavirus pandemic has and will impact dermatology, but Patel already sees progress in the area of remote treatment. “We’ve been utilizing telemedicine throughout the lockdown,” says Patel. “It has a good place in dermatology when it comes to follow-up visits, acne and rashes, or refilling prescriptions. Still, when doing a full skin exam — looking for skin cancer — seeing the person [in the same room] is the gold standard.”
