What You Need to Know about Staph Infection
With all of the panic in the news about how serious a staph infection can be it is important to make sure to step back away from the media and really check out the facts before getting too worried or upset. Due to some common misconceptions, a lot of people believe that if you get a staph infection, that is it, you are going to die. But that is really an extreme thought to have if someone mentions having a staph infection and that is why it is best to get the facts straight.
First of all, to clear any confusion, staph infection is the grouping of a lot of bacteria, which can end up causing some diseases, but not all of the time. In fact, more times then not, the bacterium does not cause a disease but there is always the exception to the rule. The staphylococcus is normally found within the nose and on top of the skin of about thirty percent of perfectly healthy adults who show no signs of problems. If you do become ill with a staph infection, you will know as it generally results in a lot of pus or abscesses on the skin, which can look to be red or swollen.
Diagnosis and Treatment
When a doctor looks at a minor staph infection on the skin, he can diagnose the problem just by looking at it. This means that there generally will not be any need for tests being done in a laboratory. But if the staph infection is actually inside the body such as a bloodstream infection or with pneumonia, there will be culturing that will need to be done in order to give the correct diagnosis. This is to make sure that the patient is treated correctly in order to clear up the problem.
When the staph infection is really just a minor infection of the skin, an antibiotic ointment is given to treat the affected area and in some rare cases, an oral antibiotic is given too. Now, if there were abscesses with the staph infection, then these would have to be drained by surgery. But then there is the more serious staph infection that is life threatening and those are treated promptly with intravenous antibiotics, which means the medicine is pumped directly into the patients system for faster results in order to hopefully save their life.
