Did you know that tinea can be spread to many parts of the body eg. the groin, under an abdominal apron and in fingernails. All of this has me questioning the way I was taught to wash and dry patients, whether in bed or in the shower\u2026top to bottom \u2013 face before genitals and feet. That makes sense? But what if we are spreading tinea from under the abdominal apron down to the genitals and feet!!<\/p>\n
When somebody has tinea pedis (feet)\u00a0 the skin integrity is disturbed allowing bacteria such as Streptococci <\/em>and Staphylococci<\/em> to enter, and it is these bacteria that can cause cellulitis. If the tinea is not treated patients may present again and again with lower limb cellulitis. So it is a good idea to check for tinea pedis and treat it, if indeed it is present.<\/p>\n As we don\u2019t always know who has tinea, the elderly, diabetics, and even healthy young athletes, it is time to rethink the whole process.<\/p>\n HiCare bath cloths<\/span>, warmed in a microwave and disposed of after use\u2026a fresh one for each part of the body. No towels, no wet sheets when bed bathing\u2026that could save on laundry bills.<\/p>\n From an OH&S point of view,\u00a0 HiCare bath cloths <\/span>would put a stop to the need for bowls of water to be carried to and from the bedside, thus reducing the risk of back injuries. Besides a bowl of water could literally be a bacteria soup \u2013 a real infection control issue!<\/p>\n Just by changing the simple practice of bedbathing \/ showering patients we could see a reduction in tinea and a concomitant reduction in the number of patients presenting with cellulitis of the lower limbs!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There is a correlation between cellulitis of the lower limbs and tinea pedis. Cellulitis can present quite an emergency situation, with pain, fever and limb swelling. Patients may need admission to hospital and intravenous antibiotics.<\/p>\n When you examine a patient with lower limb cellulitis have a look between their toes!! They may have tinea pedis (athlete’s foot) but it is not always easy to tell just by looking. Podiatrists may be able to work with you on this.<\/p>\n Talk to your laboratory about the specimens you need to collect. You may have to scrape skin from between the toes, take toenail clippings and scrapings from under the toenails. A diagnosis of tinea pedis can be made fairly quickly but diagnosing the type of fungus or mould can take weeks.<\/p>\n Many patients who are susceptible to tinea pedis are elderly or have diabetes mellitus, so this may become a much bigger problem in the future, as the number of aged, and the number of diabetics, increases worldwide. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wound-management-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thewoundcentre.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thewoundcentre.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thewoundcentre.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thewoundcentre.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thewoundcentre.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/thewoundcentre.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110,"href":"http:\/\/thewoundcentre.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions\/110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thewoundcentre.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thewoundcentre.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thewoundcentre.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}