Acute infections of the hand

Abstract

Hand infections are a common presentation to primary and secondary care. Early diagnosis and appropriate management can often produce good functional outcomes, whereas delayed or inappropriate therapy risks permanent disability, amputation and in extreme cases mortality. It can be challenging to know which patients can be treated in the primary care setting and which require referral to a local hand surgery service, plastic surgery or orthopaedics as dictated by local availability. There are two main aims for this article. The first is to provide a framework for the assessment of hand infections and common principles of management. The second is to describe the most common acute infections and clearly indicate which should be referred to secondary care and how urgently this should occur. We deliberately do not describe the intricacies of surgical techniques.