Infections of skin and soft tissue

Abstract

Infections of skin and soft tissue (SSTIs) encompass a diverse set of conditions, but there are commonalities that justify their consideration as a group. Some SSTIs are not dangerous to the patient, whereas others are life threatening and require radical surgical debridement as well as broad-spectrum antibiotic therapy. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) classified SSTIs as uncomplicated or complicated infections for the purposes of clinical trial design and enrollment. This framework is also useful for clinical description.1 © 2008 Springer New York.