Abscess Aspiration

Exclusion Criteria

• •1. Patients will be excluded if age less than age 18 or pregnant.
• •2. Patient or legal guardian is unable to give consent.
• •3. Patients with no means of clinical follow-up will be excluded.
• •4. Complicated abscesses, defined as an abscess with associated sepsis, lymphangitis, or osteomyelitis, requiring intravenous antibiotic therapy, requiring hospital admission, previous surgical drainage at site of abscess, overlying skin lesion/fistula/ulceration with the exception of cellulitis, perforated or actively draining abscess, duration of symptoms \> 5 days,1,28 and/or multiple concurrent abscesses that can be clinically regarded as chronic in nature will be excluded.
• •4\) Abscess locations which will be excluded are dental, peritonsillar, anorectal, genital/inguinal, axillary if suspicion for chronic hidradenitis suppurativa, or pilonidal/intragluteal at the base of the coccyx.
• •5\) Abscesses greater in size than 3x3x3 cm in any dimension will be excluded. \[It has been suggested extensively in the surgical literature that an abscess diameter \>3 cm should have surgical/catheter-drainage as the initial management instead of needle aspiration\]2,5,15,19,27,33 \[It has been reported that abscesses \>3 cm in size have increased failure rates\]15 6) Abscess depth is greater than maximal needle length. 7) Patients with immunosuppression from following clinical conditions will be excluded: HIV, cancer on active chemotherapy.
• •8\) Patients with active history of IV drug use will be excluded.