Osteomyelitis is a bone infection, and it is a relatively rare condition. It’s extremely serious, and it can lead to amputation of the affected area. The infection usually develops over a period of a week to ten days if the condition is acute. While there are many types of bacteria that can cause osteomyelitis, the staph bacterium is one of the most common causes. Salmonella and Streptococcus are also common causes of bone infections. However, it can also be caused by a fungus.
What Are The Risk Factors For Developing Osteomyelitis?
The biggest risk factors for osteomyelitis are intravenous drug use, diabetes, a history of spleen removal, and injuries. Diabetes is responsible for most cases. Males develop osteomyelitis more often than females.
What Regions Of The Body Can Be Affected By Osteomyelitis?
It can affect many different regions of the body. One particularly serious form of the disease is osteomyelitis of the spine. This form of the disease can result in death or long-term neurological problems.
How Is Osteomyelitis Treated?
Doctors will use an X-ray to find an infection of the bone. While this will alert doctors to the presence of the infection, additional tests will need to be performed to determine what infectious agent is causing it. In order to determine this, doctors will need to take samples of the affected area and examine the sample(s) using a microscope. In some cases, blood samples are also taken.
It is often treated with antibiotics. If the infection is caused by a fungus, antifungal medications will be administered. In most cases, the treatment is successful. However, if the infection cannot be controlled quickly enough, it can lead to an amputation being performed. Death from the illness is relatively rare. If the condition is treated, the odds of death are approximately 2.4 out of 100,000.
What Are Some Common Signs And Symptoms Of Osteomyelitis?
1. Bone Pain:
The bone pain that the disease causes is typically extremely severe and debilitating. Tenderness is typically associated with the pain. While some people believe that the concept of bone pain is technically a misnomer since there are no nerves in the bones, this actually isn’t true. There actually are a small number of nerves located inside the bone. However, there is another reason why bone pain occurs. The infection is likely to affect tissues around the bone as well. These tissues often have a higher density of nerves than the bones themselves.
The pain is often sharp in nature. Walking is a common trigger for the pain. In some cases, the tenderness may be severe enough that it completely prevents an individual from walking at all. If you suffer from acute osteomyelitis, the pain is likely to continue for a period of days or weeks until the infection is completely treated. Chronic osteomyelitis can result in pain that continues for a period of years. This form of osteomyelitis is most common in adults. However, acute osteomyelitis is more common in children. While the acute form of the disease typically causes significant pain, the chronic form of the condition does not always cause bone pain.
2. Hip Pain:
An infection in the hip is likely to impair your mobility as a result of severe pain. Certain movements are especially likely to worsen pain from a bone infection in the hip. If you bend down, this is likely to trigger severe pain. Rotating your body from one side to the other is also likely to trigger tenderness. Standing up or getting up after lying down is likely to trigger tenderness as well. Walking also is likely to trigger tenderness if you experience a bone infection in the hip. In some cases, sudden movements are more likely to trigger the tenderness than more gradual movements.
3. Body Chills:
The body chills are caused by the fever that the condition causes. While it seems paradoxical that an elevated body temperature would cause a person to feel cold, this is how people typically perceive a fever. The reason for this is that the body’s perception of the outside temperature changes as a result of the elevated internal temperature. In many cases, the body chills result in shivering. However, the chills may not be constant. In some cases, the chills may alternate with periods where you feel extremely hot. If the fever is relatively low, the chills may come and go without being interspersed with periods of feeling hot.
4. Fatigue:
The fatigue that the condition causes is serious enough to prevent you from engaging in your usual day to day activities. The fatigue is caused by the fact that the body’s resources are taken up by fighting off the infection. Fatigue occurs when the condition is caused by either bacteria or fungi. The severe fatigue contributes to an overall feeling of malaise. After you are being treated by physicians for the illness, doctors are likely to recommend that you get plenty of rest.
5. Fever:
It often causes a fever. This is because the infection causes the immune system to respond. The immune system response causes your body temperature to be elevated. The general feeling of malaise that the fever induces is sometimes what tips patients off that something is wrong. The severity of the fever varies considerably, but high fevers are common. In some cases, the fever can become so high that the fever itself poses a threat to the individual suffering from the condition. If the condition is left untreated, the fever is likely to increase in severity. Fevers greater than 105 degrees are far from unheard of.
6. Night Sweats:
Night sweats are caused by the fever. This is because the body attempts to lower the high body temperature through sweating. Being under blankets can cause you to get overheated more easily. If the sweating only occurs at night, this is often one reason for this. Despite the fact that you are likely to feel overheated while you are experiencing night sweats during an attack of osteomyelitis, you are likely to feel extremely cold and clammy once after getting out of bed. This is because the evaporation of the sweat will cause your body to cool somewhat.
7. Skin Ulcers:
Skin ulcers are open areas on the skin. The ulcers will generally appear on the region of the skin that is directly above where the infection originated from beneath the surface. The skin ulcers are often deep and very painful. If a patient has not sought medical attention yet, the appearance of spontaneously occurring opening(s) in the skin is likely to cause them to seek immediate medical attention. In some cases, pus is visible inside of the ulcer. After skin ulcers from osteomyelitis heal, there is often an unsightly scar left behind.
8. Skin Redness:
Skin redness typically occurs over the area where the osteomyelitis originates from. If doctors are unaware where the infection is most likely to be located from a verbal description of the patient’s symptoms, the region of the body where the redness is visible can point them in the right direction. The redness is often highly visible. The skin redness is caused by the immune response to the infection rather than as a direct effect of the microbes themselves. As a result of the infection, white blood cells go towards the region. In order for this to occur, increased blood flow to the area is required. This is what gives the skin a reddish color.
