This is the podcast, ICU rounds.

My name is Dr. Jeffrey Guy.

I'm an associate professor of surgery and director at the Burns Center at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee.

Welcome back to the podcast.

The topic that we're going to discuss today is that of soft tissue infections.

And soft tissue infections seem to be occurring, at least in our practice, more frequently than they have in years past.

There are several potential explanations for this that will go over this.

The name of soft tissue infections varies pretty dramatically, depending on what the context

is.

Here are these referred to as hemalytic streptococcal gangrene, necrotizing cellulitis, necrotizing

fasciitis.

And then there's always my favorite, that one that seems to

land on TV the most, and that is flesh eating bacteria. Whatever you call it is really irrelevant,

but what's important is you recognize that this is occurring, and you move to get rapid

treatment for this. And by rapidly treating the patients, you can have a dramatic impact on the morbidity and mortality associated the disease process.

When these present delay, they present requiring massive surgical debrement of skin and subcontaneous tissue,

sometimes muscle, and even in the most severe cases, entire

limbs requiring, you know, emergent amputation.

And when they presented early and treated appropriately with rapid debris event and appropriate

antibiotic therapy, we can really limit the magnitude of not only the cosmetic deficit

that these wounds create,

but also some of the functional deficits.

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