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 recognized cause: pain or tenderness, localized 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 (for example, diphtheroids (Corynebacterium spp.), Bacillus (not B. anthracis) spp., Propionibacterium spp., coagulase-negative staphylococci (including Staphylococcus epidermidis), 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

  • multinucleated giant cells seen on microscopic examination of affected tissue

  • diagnostic single antibody titre (IgM) or 4-fold increase in paired sera (IgG) for pathogen