2 Foot Productions

Basic Foot Care for Nurses and Carers across Australia

Tinea What is Tinea? What causes Tinea? Where will you find Tinea? What happens if you don't attend to a Tinea infection? What can you do to help?

What is Tinea?

Tinea is a common skin infection and it is fairly easy to spot. The skin becomes white and peels.

The infected area can become very itchy.

The surrounding skin can become quite red and split, and become painful.

What causes Tinea?

Tinea is caused by a fungus. This fungus loves warm, moist, enclosed conditions – so you can see why tinea loves toes.

Where will you find Tinea?

Tinea is commonly found on the feet. The most common part of the foot to find tinea is in between the toes. It can occur elsewhere.

What happens if you don’t attend to a tinea infection?

If someone is unwell, their immunity is down, they have diabetes or poor circulation, tinea can quickly get out of control and can cause the surrounding skin to ulcerate. Despite the fact that it is quite common, tinea is not a foot problem that you can ignore.

What can you do to help?

If you notice some changes on the feet that you think could be tinea, try being particular with the foot hygiene routine for a few days. Sometimes a good clean, keeping the feet dry, getting plenty of air to the toes and using a tea tree preparation can be enough to nip the infection in the bud.

If the infection is well established, or occurring regularly you are going to need to add an anti fungal agent to the picture.

Preparations for the skin come in the form of sprays, powders, creams and oral medication. The tablets need to be prescribed by a GP.

Fungal infections are becoming harder to treat – resistance to the well established anti fungal agents is common.

Talk to your pharmacist, GP or podiatrist about which preparations to try. Sometimes you may try one – and need to change if you don’t have a result after a week or two.