cats bite

Cat Bite: Short overview

• What to do with a cat bite? Clean wound, disinfect, cover if necessary sterile and / or create compression bandage, go to the doctor or call (in case of a severe or severely bleeding wound, such as small children) the emergency medical service
• Cats bite risks: Wound infection, injury to nerves, tendons, muscles or vessels
• When to the doctor? Basically, every cat bite should be examined by a doctor and taken care of.

Attention!

• The risk of infection in cat bites is very high. In the worst case, a life-threatening tetanus or rabies infection or blood poisoning (sepsis) develops.
• Above all, a bite on the face should be immediately provided by the doctor to avoid complications and an ugly scar.

Cat Bite: What to do?

Cat bites and other “biting” bites are common, especially among pet owners. This is because many people are unaware of the behavior of pets and overlook warning signs.

Since, according to statistics, every second cat bite inflamed, you should always go to the doctor. But first you should do first aid – as quickly as possible to reduce the risk of complications:

• Clean the woundIf the bite marks do not bleed heavily, gently clean the wound with tap water and some soap.
• Disinfect: Apply a skin disinfectant to the wound.
• Cover sterile: The cat bite should be connected germ-free. You can z. B. with a sterile wound dressing and a gauze bandage or a plaster, depending on bite size and severity.
• Quiet: Pathogens can multiply more in deep bites, if you are physically burdened. The injured body region should therefore be moved as little as possible. If you have a cat bite on your hand, you can use a triangular cloth to create an arm sling.
• Off to the doctor: Cat bites pose a high risk of infection. You should always go to the doctor with such an injury and treat the cat bite.

Should the Cat bite wound bleed heavily, you have to stop the blood flow. Try this first by pressing a germ-free compress on the wound. If necessary, you also have to create a pressure bandage:

• Cover the wound with several stacked compresses.
• Wrap this once with a gauze bandage.
• Then place an unopened bandage in its packaging on the spot and wrap it tightly with the rest of the gauze bandage.
• Make sure the dressing is not too tight. The blood supply to the affected body region must remain upright.
• Call the ambulance, especially if you can not stop the bleeding.

If the victim is shocked, he should lie down. If the head, chest or legs are not injured, the legs can be stored up.

Cat bite: risks

Overall, dogs bite more often than cats. But: cat bites are much more likely to become inflamed and often painful. If affected persons treat the cat bite by a doctor, there are usually no complications, and a maximum of a small scar remains on the skin.

Without appropriate treatment, however, a cat bite can cause dangerous complications.

Tendon and tissue damage

Cats bite mostly on hands, arms or legs. Your sharp, long teeth can leave deep punctate injuries. The wound canal can reach into a joint or onto a bone. At the hand, where cats most often bite, tendons can easily be damaged. Under certain circumstances, this can permanently restrict the mobility of the affected fingers.

In addition, stronger bites can hurt nerves, blood vessels and muscle tissue, sometimes even bones. Possible consequences include, for example, nerve breakdown, bleeding into the tissue and muscle weakness.

Cat bite infection

Cats carry many different germs in their saliva, especially various bacteria. These get into the wound when biting, where they can cause an infection. This can then spread over different ways:

Especially on the hands, the long tendons and tendon sheaths provide good propagation paths (“guide rails”) for pathogens. In addition, bacteria (and viruses) can spread throughout the body via the blood. Doctors also refer to this process as hematogenous scattering.

If the wound is deep, which is often the case with the long, pointed teeth of cats, there is often little oxygen in it. This special metabolic situation make itself so-called anaerobes benefit – Bacteria (and other microorganisms) that are not dependent on oxygen. To them counts Pasteurella multocida – a commonly transmitted bacterial species in a cat bite. Consequences are, for example, swelling of the lymph nodes and pathways as well as blood poisoning, in which the germs can lead to meningitis or bone inflammation.

Whether a cat bite has become infected can be recognized by the following signs of inflammation:

• local overheating
• reddening
• swelling
• pain
• limited function (e.g., limited mobility of the fingers in the cat bite on the hand)
• if necessary leakage of bloody secretions or pus from the wound

Especially two pathogens, which can lead to fatal infections, worry about cat bites: the bacterium that causes the Lockjaw(Tetanus) triggers and the virus responsible for rabies responsible for. Since vaccines are available for both diseases, you should take your vaccination card with you to the doctor if you have bitten a cat. A tetanus booster dose should be given if your last vaccination was more than five years ago.

A vaccine against rabies must be weighed. Stray, unknown cats often get vaccinated. If the animal is known to you, it can first be observed whether it behaves conspicuously. If not, vaccination is often unnecessary.

The right advice for rabies vaccination after a cat bite is important because rabies is always fatal.

shock symptoms

Some patients respond to a cat bite with a shock: their skin becomes pale, they shiver and their heart races. They feel dizzy and may faint. In this case, you should lay the person down and, if neither legs or chest are injured, raise your legs up.

Cat Bite: When to the doctor?

Anyone who asks for a cat bite: “When to go to the doctor?”, He said: Best immediately! Every cat bite, as small as it may look, should be taken seriously. Cat bites can become dangerously inflamed within a few hours! Even if (still) no symptoms of an infection are recognizable, the bacteria may have already spread in the body. Therefore cat bites are considered an emergency and should be treated as soon as possible.

The visit to the family doctor after a cat bite is advisable for another reason: The doctor can best assess how bad the bite injury and whether an antibiotic treatment is necessary.

If the cat has only caused a minor abrasion and you do not want to go to the doctor right away, you should thoroughly clean and disinfect the wound. Watch the cat bite in the following hours and days. Symptoms such as redness, swelling and local overheating indicate inflammation. Then go immediately to the doctor!

Cat bite: Examinations at the doctor

If you have been bitten by a cat, your doctor will first ask you in detail about the history (anamnesis). Among other things, he asks the following questions:

• When were you bitten?
• Do you know the animal or is it a stray cat?
• Are you vaccinated against tetanus?
• Do you suffer from immune deficiency, for example due to a chronic illness (such as diabetes, HIV) or cortisone treatment?

It is important for the doctor to know as much as possible about the cat that has bitten. So tell it, for example, if it was your own cat and how it is ordered to their health status and vaccination status. If it is not your own cat, but you know the owner, you should get all relevant information from this and pass it on to the doctor.

Physical examination

The anamnesis interview is followed by a physical examination. The doctor looks closely at the cat bite. He checks how deep the wound is and whether it appears clean. He also looks for possible signs of infection such as overheating or redness.

Furthermore, the doctor scans the lymph nodes of the affected body region on enlargements, so for example, the lymph nodes in the armpit in a cat bite on the hand or arm. So he can rule out or notice an inflammation of the lymph channels.

Functional and sensibility check

Here, the doctor checks whether you can move the body region with the cat bite nor normal and if the sense of touch is affected in the affected area.

wound swab

The doctor may take a smear from the wound to determine the pathogen of a possible infection. In the laboratory, it can be determined within a few days whether and which germs are present in the wound and which antibiotics are most effective in the present case.

blood test

To detect an infection early, the doctor can take you blood. In the laboratory, it is examined for signs of inflammation (e.g., increased number of leukocytes).

Imaging procedures

If necessary, the doctor can detect by X-ray, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or computed tomography (CT), whether bones or soft tissues were damaged by the cat bite.

Cat bite: treatment by the doctor

Bite wounds are usually not closed immediately. This is due to the great danger that bacteria are in the depth of the wound, which can multiply greatly in a closed wound in the absence of oxygen. Therefore, an open wound treatment is usually advisable. An exception are cat bites on the face. These are usually closed for cosmetic reasons after thorough cleaning immediately with a seam.

wound treatment

The open wound treatment includes the following steps:

• First, the wound is cleaned.
• It is kept moist by a compress impregnated with common salt.
• Grease as a finish ensures that the compress does not dry out.
• After one day, the wound is checked for a possible infection.
• The treatment is continued until the wound closes on its own.

surgery

If the cat bite becomes infected, surgery is often necessary. The infected tissue is cut out. Subsequently, the wound is treated as described above.

antibiotics

In addition, antibiotics are prescribed for an infected cat bite. These are often those with a broad spectrum of activity such as ampicillin with sulbactam.

Sometimes antibiotics are also prescribed as a precaution in a cat bite, so if (still) no signs of infection are recognizable. This is true for people with weakened immune systems, because they have an increased risk of infection.

Prevent cat bite

Bite injuries occur frequently, but are often preventable. Above all, it is helpful to be able to correctly interpret the behavior of the animal, in this case that of the cat. This is especially true for children, as they often have close contact with the beloved pet.

However, small children can not yet assess the behavior of cats. In addition, because of their smaller body size, they are more likely to be on the same level with the animal than larger children and adults. Therefore, small children are an easier target for cats, especially in sensitive areas such as the face or neck. As an adult you should therefore keep a watchful eye.

In addition, the following measures can help prevent a cat bite:

• Help your children understand that a cat is not a stuffed animal, they should not pull their tails or pelts or drag them around like a toy.
• Do not leave especially small children alone with the cat, even if it is good and fond of children.
• Move calmly in the presence of the cat and make yourself felt as you approach it. Biting is often when the animal is frightened.
• Be aware of any warning signals from cats (eg twitching of the skin muscles and tail, looking away, putting on the ears, shedding hair, hissing) and then do not touch them.
• Be careful when dealing with a cat that has a boy. Your protective instinct is then particularly pronounced.
• Do not touch foreign cats unless the owner allows it.
• If the animal is obviously ill or aggressive, and you still need to catch it (for example, to bring it to the vet), you should wear resistant gloves to avoid infection through to the rabies of a cat bite.