How to Treat Toxic Boils?

Boils are a common skin disease caused by hair follicle infection. This disease is mainly caused by immune deficiency or decreased resistance. Diabetes, obesity, and poor lifestyle habits can also lead to the occurrence of boils. Generally speaking, when boils occur, the skin will show redness, swelling, pain, and even obvious swelling. The treatment is quite simple, and antibiotics can be used to recover quickly. Boil is an infection of the suppurative hair follicle and the surrounding tissues deep within the hair follicle. When multiple adjacent hair follicles are infected and inflammation is fused, it is called carbuncle. Early inflammatory nodules can be treated with heat application or physical therapy (diathermy, infrared, or ultrashort wave), and antibiotic ointments such as mupirocin ointment can also be applied externally. When there is a pus head, carbolic acid can be applied to its top. If there is fluctuation, early incision and drainage should be performed. Mature boils should not be squeezed to avoid spreading the infection. The following four situations require the systematic use of antibiotics: 1. folliculitis located around the nose, nasal cavity, or external auditory canal; 2. large or recurrent boils; 3. cellulitis around the skin lesion; 4. no response to local treatment of the skin lesion. Sensitive antibiotics such as penicillin, cephalosporins, macrolides, and clindamycin should be administered. Initially, there may be small, red, swollen, and painful nodules that gradually enlarge and form a conical bulge. After a few days, the center of the nodule softens due to tissue necrosis, and a yellowish-white small pustule appears; the area of redness, swelling, and pain expands. After a few more days, the pustule falls off, discharging pus, and the inflammation gradually resolves and heals. Generally, there are no obvious systemic symptoms. However, if it occurs in areas rich in blood supply and the body's resistance is weakened, it can cause symptoms such as discomfort, chills, fever, headache, and anorexia. Facial boils, especially those around the upper lip and nose in the "dangerous triangle" area, if squeezed or picked, can easily lead to infection spreading along the internal canthus veins and ophthalmic veins into the intracranial cavernous sinus, causing suppurative cavernous sinusitis. This can manifest as progressive redness and induration involving the eyes and surrounding tissues, accompanied by pain and tenderness, as well as headache, chills, high fever, and even coma. The condition is very serious and has a high mortality rate.