Cellulitis

Writer: Tasnia Hakim | Editor: Vienna Mak

Say you have small, painful red patches on your lower leg region. You might glance at it and ignore it since it looks pretty common, right? However, there is a chance that it is cellulitis, a very painful skin disorder. Cellulitis is a common bacterial infection that affects dermis tissue, affecting 2 of every 1,000 people per year in the United States of America, but for some people, it can be very painful and show extreme symptoms. It enters the body through skin lesions or procedures like diabetic foot injections. Despite mainly affecting the lower leg region, it can also infect your face, arms and other regions of the body, as the bacteria reproduces at a fast rate in our warmed bodies and spreads through lymph nodes, muscles, and bloodstream, which can be major health risks and even life-threatening.

Symptoms and Risk factors

Common symptoms of cellulitis include redness, pain, abscesses full of puss, swelling, inflammation, and tight, glossy, swollen skin. The more serious symptoms of cellulitis include shaking, chills, feeling ill, fatigue, dizziness, lightheadedness, muscle aches, warm skin, and sweating. This is due to the bacterial infection rapidly spreading throughout the body, causing lethargy or drowsiness. Certain patients have conditions that make the symptoms worse, such as eczema, obesity, and ulcers.

A person with a weaker immune system, such as a cancer patient or a HIV patient, is also more prone to get it because it is a bacterial infection. Additionally, infections are more severe for people with immune systems that will not cooperate, so cellulitis can give these patients a great deal of harm or put their lives at risk.

Treatment

Cellulitis commonly has abscesses full of pus, which make the infected area swell up more. In areas of impact, doctors create an incision to drain the pus and to disinfect it. Samples of pus is further sent to labs to deduce the needed antibiotics. Oral antibiotics, including dicloxacillin, amoxicillin, flucloxacillin, and cephalexin, may be prescribed to people with less severe and more common symptoms. In more severe cases, medication may also be administered through Intravenous therapy (IV) in the hospital. This form of treatment is known as Outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy (OPAT), which is administered by putting the solution into the infected area through a needle.

Misdiagnosis

Dermatology is a growing field. It is common to find misdiagnoses in this field for skin disorders due to the lack of technology that is needed to diagnose this disorder. According to the Royal College of Physicians, approximately 30% of cellulitis patients are misdiagnosed by doctors. This is most likely due to the fact that doctors diagnose a patient with cellulitis just by simply observing the infected area rather than testing the cells or taking a sample, since as previously stated, cellulitis commonly starts off as a small red patch, which can be mistaken for normal skin irritation or other injuries. It is often mixed up with eczema, lymphoedema, lipodermatosclerosis, or other skin disorders. These misdiagnoses cause patients to spend unnecessary money and time. About 92% of misdiagnosed patients do not need the antibiotics given, which are fairly expensive due to the fact that our healthcare is not free. Thus, misdiagnoses are harmful and stressful for both the patients and the doctor.

Overall, cellulitis is a bacterial infection in the skin that can happen to anyone. Thanks to modern technology, there are various forms of treatments and therapy available for cellulitis, However, like many other skin disorders, such as psoriasis, cellulitis has a high risk of getting misdiagnosed because it can look like a harmless patch or mistaken for another disorder. Dermatology is a growing field filled with emerging technologies that can facilitate the diagnosis process; this will reduce the harm and stress from misdiagnosis of cellulitis. There are various types of cases and causes of cellulitis, but all levels of cellulitis should be treated, no matter how harmless or mild it may seem. The earlier it gets treated, the earlier it will get healed and cause fewer problems.

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Sources

• Normandin, B. (2020, February 19). Cellulitis: Causes, Symptoms, Treatments, and Pictures. Retrieved October 04, 2020, from https://www.healthline.com/health/cellulitis

• Sullivan, T., & De Barra, E. (2018, March). Diagnosis and management of cellulitis. Retrieved October 04, 2020, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6303460/