The practice houses more than fifty FDA-approved lasers and energy-based devices, which is more than most dermatology departments at teaching hospitals. Dermatology, Laser & Vein Specialists of the Carolinas, known to its patients as DLVSC, uses them for everything from skin cancer surgery to varicose veins to the cosmetic work the name suggests, and every procedure is performed or supervised by a board-certified physician.
The founder is Dr. Girish “Gilly” Munavalli, and he built the practice in the state he grew up in after training across the country.
It started with a long education
Munavalli is a native of Salisbury, North Carolina, and has spent more than a third of his life in the state, according to his practice biography. His education ran from a biology degree at UNC Chapel Hill in 1992 to a master’s in immunology and infectious disease at Johns Hopkins’ school of public health, a medical degree cum laude from Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta in 1998 and a surgical internship at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale.
His dermatology residency was at Emory, and he was board certified in 2002. He then completed fellowships in Mohs micrographic surgery, cutaneous oncology, facial reconstruction, cosmetic surgery and laser surgery at the University of California, San Francisco, training with some of the best known names in the field, and a further fellowship in phlebology and advanced laser surgery at the Maryland Laser, Skin and Vein Institute outside Baltimore, according to a profile in The Dermatologist.
He spent years on the clinical faculty at Johns Hopkins before returning to North Carolina and founding DLVSC in Charlotte, where he has served as medical director since. He has been an assistant clinical professor at Wake Forest’s dermatology department for years and co-directs a Charlotte-based fellowship program for the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery.
The Wake Forest appointment is not honorary. Munavalli has spent years as an assistant clinical professor in the university’s dermatology department in Winston-Salem, according to The Dermatologist, and the co-directorship of the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery fellowship in Charlotte means the practice trains the next generation of surgeons in its own operating suites. His fifty-plus peer-reviewed articles and book chapters are the academic side of a practice that also sells skin care at a retail counter.
The people behind it
Munavalli’s stated philosophy is availability. I believe in always being available and accessible to my patients for ongoing care, he told Charlotte Magazine, and the practice’s goal is to offer the latest in advanced medical and surgical dermatologic care to every patient. He has published more than fifty peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and lectures internationally on laser medicine.
The practice’s providers have included Dr. Payman Kosari, Dr. Hayley Leight and a team of physician assistants and nurse practitioners, and the model is a team of physicians and staff who, in Munavalli’s words, craft treatment plans tailored to each patient’s lifestyle, budget and goals. The practice has been recognized repeatedly in Charlotte Magazine’s Top Doctors lists.
Munavalli’s research and teaching keep the practice at the front of device medicine. He has presented on vascular lasers for rosacea and on new platforms for treating inflammatory acne and surgical scars, according to Dermatology Times, and the Charlotte fellowship he co-directs trains dermatologic surgeons in the procedures the practice performs. His memberships run through the American Academy of Dermatology, the American College of Mohs Surgery and the societies for dermatologic surgery, laser medicine and phlebology.
What you actually get
DLVSC is three practices in one. The general dermatology department handles comprehensive skin examinations, complex rashes and skin cancer, with Mohs surgery for facial skin cancers as a specialty. The comprehensive vein clinic treats varicose veins and saphenous reflux with endovenous laser treatment, an outpatient procedure Munavalli’s phlebology training made possible and which the practice says involves virtually no downtime. The cosmetic and laser surgery side covers skin tightening and resurfacing, laser treatment of photo-aging and acne, laser hair removal for any skin type, tumescent liposuction and body contouring, fillers and eyelid surgery.
The main office is at 1918 Randolph Road, with additional locations in Pineville and Monroe, and a fully staffed retail store sells physician-grade skin care. The practice also runs research studies, which is part of how the device count stays current.
The practice’s three departments share a building on Randolph Road in the Elizabeth and Eastover medical corridor, with the Pineville office on Park Road serving south Charlotte and the Monroe office reaching Union County. A patient can move from a skin check to a Mohs procedure to reconstruction without leaving the practice, which is the argument for a physician-founded group over a chain, and the vein clinic’s endovenous laser treatment turned a hospital procedure into an outpatient one when Munavalli introduced it here.
Why it matters
Charlotte has grown into a city with large dermatology groups and national chains, and a physician-founded practice with a research program and a fellowship is a different thing from either. DLVSC is the practice a Charlotte doctor sends a complicated skin cancer to, and also the one a patient books for a laser treatment, and the same board-certified physicians handle both.
Munavalli could have practiced anywhere his training took him. He came back to North Carolina, built the practice on Randolph Road, and filled it with more lasers than a hospital. His patients, by his account, can reach him.