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-