Diagnosis and treatment of tinea pedis. A review and update.

Fungal foot infections are becoming an increasingly common public health problem as the population ages. New studies have shown that some of the traditional therapeutic antifungal agents have multiple actions that enable them to be more efficacious than previously thought, and more efficacious than other agents without multiple actions. In this review article, the pedal infections commonly referred to as tinea pedis, or athlete's foot, are described. The etiologic agents involved in the pathogenesis, the methodologies for proper diagnosis, and the therapeutic agents commercially available for treatment are reviewed.