Panaritium is an inflammatory process that can develop on the toe of both the legs and arms. Bacteria cause inflammation. Usually these are staphylococci or streptococci, but anaerobic microflora can also join, causing putrefactive fusion of finger tissues.
The appearance of panaritium on the leg is associated with microtrauma, a splinter, improper pedicure or shearing of barbs, when an infection from shoes, ground, clothes gets into the wound.
Types of panaritium on the foot
There are several types of it, depending on which tissues are inflamed and where the pus has managed to get. That's it:
- skin;
- subcutaneous;
- articular;
- tendon;
- bone;
- articular felon.
Separate forms are paronychia (when pus is located in the periungual roller), subungual panaritium (accumulation of pus under the nail), and also such a situation when pus melts all tissues - from skin to bone (this is called pandactylitis).
Manifestations of felon
The difference between panaritium and other purulent diseases is that this disease is characterized by a rather rapid spread of pus to neighboring areas and tissues. This is due to the structure of the hands and feet: there is subcutaneous fat under the skin, tendons and muscles pass under it. The peculiarity of these places is that the tendons of the muscles that move the fingers are enclosed in special cases made of connective tissue and surrounded by loose fatty tissue: pus, falling into such a layer, easily spreads both in length and in thickness.
Panaritium manifests itself as edema, redness and pain in the finger region of varying severity. The pain is pulsating in nature, it intensifies by night, and has a tendency to increase. Surgeons even have a rule of the first sleepless night, meaning that if a person could not fall asleep due to pain in the finger, it is time to operate it.
With the spread of the purulent process, the general condition of the patient worsens: weakness appears, body temperature rises, and the pulse quickens. It becomes more and more painful to move your finger or step on it while walking, swelling and redness are becoming more noticeable and pronounced.
Panaritium: how to treat
The treatment of panaritium on the leg is almost always surgical - under local (with a common process - under general) anesthesia, an abscess is opened, the dead tissue is removed, then the wound is drained and 1-2 sutures are applied to it, or the sutures are not applied at all. The wound is washed with solutions of peroxide, chlorhexidine, furatsillina. Antibiotics are prescribed inside or intramuscularly (intravenously).
How to treat panaritium at home?
If the abscess is visible under the skin, the swelling and redness are small, there has not been a sleepless night, you can try the following method: alternate 2 types of compress during the day:
1) Dressings with a hypertonic solution of sodium chloride: you can take a prepared 10% solution in a pharmacy or prepare it yourself by dissolving a tablespoon of salt in a glass of water. Apply and hold the compress until it dries, 2-3 times a day.
2) Compress with dimexide: dilute dimexide with boiled water at the rate of 1: 4, soak sterile gauze with this solution, apply on the finger, polyethylene on top, a bandage or cotton cloth on top . The best option would be to pour an antibiotic solution on top of gauze (for example, penicillin diluted with saline - 5 ml per 1 vial), and then only apply cellophane and gauze.
When treating panaritium, one rule must be remembered: an abscess cannot be heated in any case in order to prevent the process from spreading to the underlying and neighboring tissues.