Shingles Strikes With a Vengeance

1. A 16-year-old girl presents with a rash manifesting several weeks ago that became enlarged and more symptomatic after she applied hydrogen peroxide and scrubbed with antibacterial soap. Large, annular, honey-colored crusts are focally located around the left eye, and faint pinkness is noted peripherally around the lesions. Modest but palpable adenopathy is detected in the pretragal and submental nodal areas.

Diagnosis: Impetigo has also been called impetiginized dermatitis because it almost always starts with minor breaks in the skin as a result of conditions such as eczema, acne, contact dermatitis, or insect bite. Thus provided with access to deeper portions of the epithelial surface, bacterial organisms that normally cause no problems on intact skin are able to create the minor but annoying condition we call impetigo. Rarely associated with morbidity, it tends to resolve in two to three weeks at most, even without treatment.

For more information, see “Is It Ringworm, Herpes— Or Something Else Entirely?” Clinician Reviews. 2014;24(11):8-9.