Necrotising fasciitis: Experiences and a study in India

Necrotizing fasciitis represents a diverse disease process, the term encompassing a range from simple pyoderma to life threatening infections. It is one of the most lethal and virulent forms of surgical soft tissue infections requiring extensive therapy .Different anatomical locations, tissue levels, offending organisms and predisposing factors along with host factors result in the varied presentations and subsequent clinical course and prognosis. The multiple predisposing factors , disease presentations ranging from asymptomatic to florid sepsis, diverse flora of organisms involved, makes the disease complex. Clinical acumen aided with histopathological evaluation yield a relative accurate diagnosis. All patients with spreading Cellulitis should be presumed to be suffering from necrotizing fasciitis until proved otherwise. In the present study, increasing annual incidence of the disease has been noted with most of the cases occurring from July to September over the study period.