Participants and setting
Recruitment took place in 20 hospitals between August 2006
and August 2008. Patients were identified either at presentation
in secondary care (through emergency departments, medical
admissions units, medical wards and outpatient clinics), or
retrospectively via discharge coding or poster adverts.
Eligible participants had had a diagnosis of cellulitis of the
leg within the last 12 weeks (index episode). Cellulitis was
defined as a confirmed diagnosis of cellulitis by the recruiting
dermatologist. If the patient was not seen by the recruiting clinician
during the acute phase, then validation of the diagnosis
was sought from medical case notes in combination with
patient discussion. In this case, the following criteria were
met: (i) local warmth and tenderness or acute pain; (ii) unilateral
erythema, or asymmetrical erythema with the more
severe side having a temporal relationship to the symptoms;
and (iii) unilateral oedema. Any doubt over the certainty of
the diagnosis was grounds for exclusion.
Patients were excluded from the trial if: (i) they had taken
antibiotic prophylaxis for the prevention of cellulitis within
6 months of the index episode; (ii) it was longer than
12 weeks since the start of treatment for the index episode to
the date of the baseline visit; (iii) they had known allergy to