| • | mnemonic = you sea bathing suits at the beach |
| • | caused by the stinging nematocysts tiny organs that uncoil a thread-like stinger (activated by pressure or contact with fresh water) of the larvae of the phylum Cnidaria jelly fish, man of war, sea anemones, and fire coral |
| • | lesions appear within a few hours of exposure |
| • | highly pruritic red papule and wheals |
| • | usually resolve in a few days |
| • | summary: nematocyst-bearing larvae trapped under the bathing suit produce an intensely itchy and painful papular eruption |
comment:
| • | the classic teaching is that seabather's distribution is the bathing suit covered skin, while swimmer's itch is the opposite, and spares the covered areas |
| • | I have never seen swimmer's itch, but my experience with seabather's eruption (including having it myself), it always occurs on both the covered and exposed areas of the skin (I would add seabather's eruption to your differential diagnosis for generalized distribution) |
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