You are seeing a 32-year-old woman with a skin abscess on her lower back that has grown in size during the past week. It appears erythematous, fluctuant, and is 3 cm in diameter. You see no active drainage or any fistula formation around the lesion. How would you drain this abscess?

Dr. Anton Helman is an Emergency Physician at North York General in Toronto. He is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, Division of Emergency Medicine and the Education Innovation Lead at the Schwartz-Reisman Emergency Medicine Instititute. He is the founder, editor-in-chief and host of Emergency Medicine Cases.