Keratosis: Can a dermatologist tell me anything a GP can't?

Factual Questions
1

I have a keratosis on my neck. It itches. Started back in 2008 and I didn’t seek treatment until 2011, when I went to a dermatologist (1.5 hours away) who burned it off.

It’s been itching again lately. The dermatologist is a long ways away and hard to get into so I made an appointment with a local doctor, who said he couldn’t burn it since it wasn’t showing symptoms of a keratosis so he couldn’t do anything with it. He gave me some hydrocortisone and that was it.

Disappointed, I made an appointment with the same dermatology clinic.

Is a specialist gonna tell me anything new? I had never seen the GP before and just made an appointment available doctor since I figured this wouldn’t be a big deal.

2

It will depend a lot on the specific GP and the specific specialist, but for an example from another specialty, my mother’s “irritable colon syndrome” turned out to be no such thing but a secondary reaction to her diabetes medication. The GP did have the information about the diabetes medication causing that reaction in 10% of patients, but he wasn’t really conscious of it - the stomach doctor was. There may have been some development on keratosis treatment that your GP doesn’t know about but your dermatologist will.