Dear patient,

Thanks for the health concerns. Many possibilites are in the differential but the main ones are either infectious causes (such as impetigo, tinea corporis, etc) or inflammatory/allergic causes( such as contact dermatitis, ecczema). To avoid unnecessary trials of medication and error, most of the time the best course of action is seeing an experienced dermatology provider, who is also well versed in scarppings of lesions so that these can be sent for microscope analysis and culture, to come to THE specific diagnosis; this is particularly important since you have cardiovascular disease and diabetes, conditions in which you just don't want to "experiment" with trial and error therapies.

Yours truly,

Dr Brenes-Salazar MD
Cardiology
Mayo Clinic MN

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