Division SST-SKIN: Skin infection

Skin infections must meet at least one of the following criteria:

• Patient has purulent drainage, pustules, vesicles, or boils

• Patient has at least two of the following signs or symptoms with no other recognised cause: pain or tenderness, localised swelling, redness, or heat

AND at least one of the following:

• organisms cultured from aspirate or drainage from affected site; if organisms are normal skin flora (e.g. diphtheroids [Corynebacterium spp.], Bacillus [not B.anthracis] spp., Propionibacterium spp., coagulase-negative staphylococci [including Staphylococcusepidermidis], viridans group streptococci, Aerococcus spp., Micrococcus spp.), they must be a pure culture

• organisms cultured from blood

• positive antigen test performed on infected tissue or blood (e.g. herpes simplex, varicella zoster, Haemophilus influenzae, Neisseria meningitidis)

• multinucleated giant cells seen on microscopic examination of affected tissue

• diagnostic single antibody titer (IgM) or four-fold increase in paired sera (IgG) for pathogen