The symptoms of an abscess in the skin or soft tissues are swelling, redness, and pain. If the skin around the abscess has become infected, the redness may spread toward the center of the body and you may have a fever, body aches, and tiredness.
Your doctor will ask about your symptoms and examine the area that is red and swollen.

The treatment for an abscess is usually to cut it open and drain it. This is called an incision and drainage, or I&D. Infection from the abscess may spread to the surrounding tissues and even into the bloodstream. To help treat or prevent spread of the infection, your doctor may prescribe antibiotics as part of the treatment. The abscess itself has to be cut open and drained because the thick wall around it will not let antibiotics get through to fight the infection in the abscess.

When an I&D is done, first your doctor cleans the skin over the abscess and injects an medicine into the skin to make it numb. He or she then cuts open the abscess, and the pus drains out. This drainage of pus often decreases the pain right away because it relieves the pressure caused by the fluid.

Your doctor then packs the pocket with gauze. One end of the gauze is in the abscess and the other end is left sticking out through the cut in the skin. This allows the pus that forms in the abscess to drain out. It also prevents the skin from healing back over the abscess and sealing it off again. The gauze packing is changed every day or two. Your body will fill in the pocket where the abscess was with new tissue. Once the abscess is filled in, the packing is removed for the last time and the skin is allowed to heal and close up.