Practice Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Management of Skin and Soft-Tissue Infections

Soft-tissue infections are common, generally of mild to modest severity, and are easily treated with a variety of agents. An etiologic diagnosis of simple cellulitis is fre-quently difficult and generally unnecessary for patients with mild signs and symptoms of illness. Clinical as-sessment of the severity of infection is crucial, and sev-eral classification schemes and algorithms have been proposed to guide the clinician 1. However, most clinical assessments have been developed from either retrospective studies or from an author’s own “clinical experience, ” illustrating the need for prospective studies with defined measurements of severity coupled to man-agement issues and outcomes. Until then, it is the recommendation of this com-mittee that patients with soft-tissue infection accom-