diagnosis
Generally, patients with Athlete’s Foot seek treatment because of two common symptoms – pruritus (itching) and a burning or stinging sensation. With interdigital Athlete’s Foot, these symptoms normally occur first between the fourth and fifth toes. Other signs include:
- Desquamation: shedding of the outer layer of the skin.
- Erythema: diffuse redness over the skin of the affected area; also a classic sign of inflammation.
- Exudation: the gradual passage of fluid out of a lesion; the fluid may be pus or other inflammatory exudates.
- Fissuring: furrows or clefts on a lesion; often seen as cracks in the skin.
- Maceration: often pertains to areas of the skin that are particularly moist due to retention (of sweat for example), between the toes, in the groin, and other intertriginous (body fold) areas; in general, maceration refers to softening by soaking in a liquid.
- Vesiculation: blistering characterised by the presence of a number of vesicles (small, clear, circumscribed lesions, usually containing clear fluid).
The specific clinical features will depend on the inflammatory response of the host. Lesions usually appear as erythematous (red) areas with fine white scales, which are the result of increased epidermal turnover in response to the inflammation.
