My friend has terrible problems with some infection. At the beginning, I was thinking it would pass as any other infection. However, after a while his doctors diagnosed him with necrotizing fasciitis, so now he needs heavy surgery to be done to survive. This scared me because I have never heard for something like that. I am also surprised how doctors could not recognize this disease at its beginning.
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The patient usually appears moderately to severely toxic, but during early stage of necrotizing fasciitis, and the patient may look deceptively well. Typically, the infection begins with an area of erythema that quickly spreads. It might happen over a course of hours to days, which is why this is dangerous. The redness caused by infection quickly spreads, and the margins of infection move out into normal skin without being raised or sharply demarcated. As it progresses, the infection gives way to dusky or purplish skin discoloration near the site of insult, and this could be noticed by doctor. Multiple identical patches develop to produce a large area of gangrenous skin, as the erythema continues to spread in patient’s body. The initial necrosis in necrotizing fasciitis patients appears as a massive undermining of the skin and subcutaneous layer. If the skin is open, gloved fingers can pass easily between the two layers and may reveal yellowish-green necrotic fascia, which might looks terrible. In some patients, the skin could be unbroken, so the scalpel incision will reveal it. Fascial necrosis is typically more advanced than the appearance suggests, so without treatment, secondary involvement of deeper muscle layers may occur, resulting in myositis or myonecrosis.
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