Diane E. Duvall, MD

I went to Dr. Duvall because my normal dermatologist was all booked up. I went in because I had three persistent pimples on my neck. She suggested that she inject them with cortisone to make them resolve faster. I seriously regret allowing Dr. Duvall to perform this procedure. Though I have had pimples injected before by my normal dermatologist and I never had any problem when Dr. Duvall injected mine I experienced bad side effects. Immediately after the injections the skin surrounding the three pimples became red and inflamed (a sign that too much cortisone was injected, I have had this confirmed by other specialists). Over the course of the next few days the skin around all three lesions began to atrophy, meaning essentially, that my skin began to disappear. I went back to Dr. Duvall and she apologized and offered to give me laser treatments to reverse the damage she had done. "Thanks, but no thanks" I respectfully declined. I have since gone back to my normal derm and she hopes that the damage Dr. Duvall did to my skin will resolve over the course of the next few months, if not I may have to spend thousands of dollars to get my skin back. In my opinion this woman is careless and should not be practicing medicine. It should be stated that she never explained that deep, dermis atrophy could be a side effect of the injections, before she injected me. Updated on 5 Jul 2014: Just an update on my healing. It's now been a little over three months since my neck was injected with cortisone to treat three pimples and my cortisone skin atrophy first appeared. The area is definitely not as purplish and sunken looking by it still is far from being 100% restored. I hope that in time it will completely resolve. If not, I may consider saline infiltration of the sites in hopes of promoting healing. If any doctors have experience with this procedure or people who have had saline injections to reverse skin atrophy are on this site, please let me know of your experience and results.