Osteomyelitis
If you're like most teens you're probably pretty active and aren't always really careful, so you end up getting bruises and cuts. Sometimes a bad cut that gets infected can lead to even worse things, like a bone infection. The medical term for a bone infection is osteomyelitis.What Is Osteomyelitis?
Osteomyelitis is a bone infection often caused by bacteria called Staphylococcus aureus . Depending on how the bone becomes infected and the age of the person, other types of bacteria can cause it, too. In kids and teens, osteomyelitis usually affects the long bones of the arms and legs.
Bacteria can infect bones in a number of ways. Bacteria can travel into the bone through the bloodstream from other infected areas in the body. This is called hematogenous (hema refers to the blood) osteomyelitis, and is the most common way that people get bone infections.
Another way is by direct infection, when bacteria enter the body's tissues through a wound and travel to the bone (like after an injury). Open fractures — breaks in the bone with the skin also open — are the injuries that most often develop osteomyelitis.
A bone also can become infected when the blood supply to that area of the bone is disrupted. This can happen in older people with atherosclerosis , which is a narrowing of the blood vessels, or in association with diabetes. Most infections of this kind occur in the toes or feet.
What Are the Signs and Symptoms?
People with osteomyelitis often feel severe pain in the infected bone. They might have fever and chills, feel tired or nauseated, or have a general feeling of not being well. The skin above the infected bone may be sore, red, and swollen. It's sometimes difficult to diagnose osteomyelitis in infants and young children because they don't always show pain or specific symptoms in the area of the infection. Also, older people with diabetes or another problem with their blood vessels don't always show signs of fever or pain. For teenagers, it's frequently a preceding accident or injury that leads to the infection.
If the osteomyelitis developed after an open wound, the injured area may begin to hurt again after initially seeming to get better.
