Symptoms of Erysipelas

Posted by sanjay on Monday 23 Mar 2009

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Symptoms of Erysipelas

What is Erysipelas?

Erysipelas is a type of skin infection/cellulitis. This can affect people of all ages; however, normally older persons and infants are the most commonly affected.

What causes Erysipelas?

Erysipelas is caused by the bacteria known as streptococcus; this occurs all of a sudden. If you had strep throat earlier, you will find that your face gets the rash. Sometimes the rash appears on your leg or arm if the earlier infection was in the wound from an operation or injury.

What are the Symptoms for Erysipelas?

The erysipelas symptoms normally occur all of a sudden. The common symptoms are as follows:
• Development of blisters on the skin wound
• Possible fever, shivering and chills
• The affected area of the skin will be red and swollen; it might look like the skin of an orange at the end
• Pus might develop under the skin in cases of severity.
• The swelling in cellulitis will be relatively less; however, all other characteristics like pain, increase in warmth, etc. are same as erysipelas.
Erysipelas can also create the following complications:
• The infection can spread to bones, joints and heart valves if the patient has bacteria in his or her blood.
• In rare cases, the patient might be affected by Streptococcal Toxic Shock Syndrome.
You can prevent erysipelas if you can avoid scrapes and cuts on your body. Before that, you must ensure that all streptococcal infections are treated fully; this includes wound and strep throat infections.

How to treat Erysipelas

The following treatments are commonly given for Erysipelas:
• Penicillin is commonly prescribed for treating erysipelas; under normal circumstances oral ingestion of this is sufficient. However, in severe cases it is given intravenously by injecting the medicine into the vein using a needle.
• If the patient is allergic to penicillin, erythromycin is given to the patient.
• In order to reduce the discomfort due to Erysipelas symptoms, apply cold packs on the affected area; alternately take pain killers.
• In case of patients getting repeated attacks, a treatment of prevention by long-term use of penicillin must be considered.
• Another popular medicine for treating Erysipelas is flucloxacillin; this can be taken orally as tablets and syrup. Otherwise it is taken as intramuscular injections/ intravenous infusions.