Flesh-eating disease

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 47, No. 7, September 2005, Page 351 Letters
By: Jim Battershill, MD

Although I am 80 years old and retired, my brain occasionally fires up as it did this morning when I heard of another case of “flesh-eating” disease.

When I was a child there were no antibiotics, and cuts, abrasions, and the like were treated by conscientious moms very seriously with cleansing, antisepsis (usually tincture of iodine or peroxide) and a clean (ironed) bandage. Perhaps we have become too careless in our overdependence on the antibiotics.

Nevertheless, the infection has to enter the body and I think the recent cases should be evaluated as to what initial treatment was given. I was struck with the horrible thought that the fomite might even be some proprietary salve applied in good faith.

By the way, it—or similar conditions—used to be called necrotizing fasciitis or surgical scarlet fever. I have seen both. One has crepitus and the other a brilliant local scarlet rash.

—Jim Battershill, MD
North Vancouver

Jim Battershill, MD. Flesh-eating disease. BCMJ, Vol. 47, No. 7, September, 2005, Page(s) 351 - Letters.


Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

Leave a Reply