Isotretinoin is a rewarding medication to prescribe. With an efficacy rate of 60% to 85%, it is the only option that dermatologists have to offer an acne “cure.”1
Preventing pregnancies for women receiving isotretinoin is a challenging aspect of patient management. In the United States, monitoring systems such as SMART (System to Manage Accutane-Related Teratogenicity) and iPLEDGE have attempted to address this. These elaborate systems have resulted in a decrease in overall isotretinoin prescriptions and have disproportionately affected the treatment of acne in women. At Kaiser Permanente, after the implementation of iPLEDGE, prescriptions for women declined by 36% compared with 20% for men. Federal monitoring has not, however, been shown to decrease pregnancies.2