Dog, cat and rabbit bites accounted for almost 140 admissions to Western Health’s emergency departments over two years, according to a new research report.
Doctors Brian Yue and Jeanette Ting reviewed patients who presented with animal bite injuries to eight Victorian emergency departments – the Alfred, Austin, Royal Melbourne, Frankston, Monash Medical Centre, St Vincent’s and Western Health hospitals Footscray and Sunshine – in the 2012 and 2013 calendar years.
Dr Yue said of the 138 people admitted to either Sunshine or Footscray hospital emergency departments in the two-year period, almost 40 per cent were aged under 18. “It is quite a lot,” he said.
But the plastic surgery registrar said it was unfair to make a comparison with other hospitals in the study because of the varying demographic make-up of each hospital’s catchment.
“The figure is quite high, but we can’t say this is a significant difference [to other hospitals] because Sunshine and Footscray could have a greater paediatric population,” Dr Yue said. “But in absolute numbers, this is not a small number.”
Dr Yue said that in the two years, 50 children aged under 18 presented to Western Health’s emergency departments with animal bites; 33 were inflicted by dogs, 15 by cats and two by rabbits.
The study, conducted with the assistance of four plastic surgeons and published in the
Health burden
Medical Journal of Australia, found that animal bites are common in Australia and their treatment is a substantial public health burden.
Prior to this study, there had been few investigations into the number of patients with animal bites admitted to hospital or the number requiring surgery.
The findings reveal almost 720 people were presented to an emergency department across the eight hospitals in the two years. The average age of patients was 36 and about 60 per cent of cases involved bites to the upper limbs.
Half of all patients admitted to hospital required surgery.
Most presented to an emergency department within 24 hours of the injury. About half of all cases admitted to hospital were administered with intravenous antibiotics.
The study found that almost all bites sustained by children under 15 were dog bites, with 63 per cent of those to the head and neck.
Males were more likely to sustain dog-bite injuries, while cat bites were most common with middle-aged women.
