Cellulitis is a bacterial skin infection that is misdiagnosed for other skin diseases. Consulting a dermatologist can help prevent antibiotic misuse and hospitalizations.
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‘Early consultation with a dermatologist for cellulitis improves outcomes for the patients, avoids unnecessary hospitalizations and exposure to antibiotics.’
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A new study by researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital demonstrates that early consultation by a dermatologist for patients with presumed cellulitis was a cost-effective intervention to prevent misdiagnoses and improve health-related outcomes. ![twitter](https://images.medindia.net/icons/news/social/twitter.png)
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"This is a big win-win for both the patients and for the hospitals," said corresponding author Arash Mostaghimi, MD, MPA, MPH, Director of Inpatient Dermatology. "Our findings show that early intervention by dermatologists for patients with presumptive cellulitis, not only improves outcomes for the patients but saves the hospitals on costs associated with unnecessary hospitalization and opens up beds in the emergency department."
Previous work by Mostaghimi and his colleagues evaluated a series of patients in BWH's Emergency Department with a presumptive diagnosis of cellulitis and determined that a third of these patients had pseudocellulitis.
Alarmed by this statistic, the dermatology consult team partnered with the inpatient group and ED to provide dermatology consultation for 165 patients in the ED observation unit who were about to be admitted with a presumptive diagnosis of cellulitis.
A third of these patients were diagnosed with pseudocellulitis by dermatology consultation. The dermatologists recommended the discontinuation of antibiotics in 82.4 percent of these patients, and discharge from planned observation or inpatient admissions in half of the patients. None of the patients diagnosed with pseudocellulitis showed worsening of their condition after discharge.
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- between 97,000 to 256,000 in hospitalization days
- 34,000 to 91,000 cases of unnecessary antibiotic exposure
- It could also result in $80 million to $210 million in net cost savings annually
Mostaghimi and his team are currently developing tools to allow them to provide high-quality dermatology consultation remotely, which they call "teledermatology," to improve health-related outcomes of pseudocellulitis diagnoses on a much larger scale.
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