Your body has an impressive ability: regeneration. You get a cut or a scrape and, with time, that area should knit itself back together.
Keep an eye on your wounds, though. That break in your skin provides an opening for unwelcome invaders to get into your system, which can lead to infection and even an abscess. If you develop an abscess, it’s important to get prompt care. If you don’t, the infection can spread. In severe cases, it could even become life-threatening.
Fortunately, our team can intervene. At both of our SmartClinic Urgent Care locations in Santa Clarita and West Covina, California, we offer excellent wound care, including diagnosis and treatment for abscesses.
To put it succinctly, an abscess is a pocket of pus, most often caused by an infection. This issue can develop because a gland has become blocked, but it’s also possible to develop an abscess after you’ve hurt yourself in a way that creates an opening in your skin.
If bacteria gets into that opening, your body goes to work trying to fight it. If it develops into an infection, your system kicks into overdrive. The whitish color of the pus can be partially attributed to the white blood cells your body has sent to the area.
Some of the key indicators that your wound has turned into an abscess include:
If any of these sound familiar, keep a close eye on the wound. If it doesn’t improve within a few days — and especially if it grows or you notice red streaks around it, indicating the infection is spreading — come into the clinic to for treatment.
The body can sometimes heal small abscesses on its own, but these health problems often need medical intervention. At SmartClinic Urgent Care, our medical team scales up treatment depending on the severity of your abscess.
As a first wave of treatment, we usually prescribe antibiotics. These help your body fight the infection.
Some abscesses need to be drained. We do that in the most minimally invasive way possible in a sterile environment.
Addressing your abscess means helping your body fight off the infection. This way, it doesn’t spread and become a much larger issue. Left unchecked, an infection can lead to a systemic issue like sepsis, which can be life-threatening.
If you get hurt and the injury creates an opening in your skin, keep an eye on the area. If your wound shows signs of an abscess and the issue doesn’t get better within a few days, be sure to visit our team. You can simply walk into either of our locations, or you can call SmartClinic Urgent Care to make an appointment.
