Solve a medical mystery with Dr. Lisa Sanders. On Thursday, we
challenged Well readers to solve a case of a woman with painful,
pus-filled leg wounds that did not respond to antibiotics. More
than 400 people wrote in, and a whopping 85 came up with the
right answer. The first person to figure out the diagnosis was
Heather Chambers, a third-year medical student at Dalhousie
Medical School in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The correct diagnosis
is… In an e-mail, Ms. Chambers wrote, “Having just begun the
clinical portion of my training, I’ve certainly never seen
pyoderma gangrenosum, and, being quite rare, it’s likely I will
never see it over the course of my career. However, I recall
learning about it as part of our preclinical dermatology
curriculum last spring, and it was the first condition that came
to mind that could account for a deep and seemingly infected
ulcer that wouldn’t respond to a powerful broad spectrum
antibiotic like vancomycin.” Pyoderma gangrenosum is a rare and
somewhat mysterious skin condition th