Perineal necrotizing infection

Perineal necrotizing infection is a severe disease that ever since its first description by Fournier in 1883 has been referred to by many names prompted by its protean nature in terms of location and suspected etiology. We treated nine patients with PNI. The infection began as a perineal abscess of long evolution (7 days +/- 2 SD) in eight patients. The ninth patient had had an inguinal herniorrhaphy 3 days before. The cultures of the exudates and tissues always yielded aerobic and anaerobic mixed flora of colorectal origin, except in one instance, in which S. aureus and hemolytic streptococcus A were identified. The treatment was medical support and wide surgical debridement of the infected tissues. In six patients a left transverse colostomy was performed. Only one patient died, of septic shock. On the basis of the results in our series and on a review of the literature, it is our opinion that PNI is a mixed bacterial infection that despite its origin, clinical appearance and microbiologic findings, is highly uniform in terms of clinical course and treatment. Therapy is based on radical surgical debridement with excision of all necrotic tissue. The current plethora of terms seems impractical and confusing. We propose a rather comprehensive term perineal necrotizing infection for the sake of clarity.