A dog bites your finger. The wound appears minor so you don’t go to the hospital. Instead you clean the wound yourself. The next day you wake up with extreme pain in your leg. A blood clot has formed, requiring immediate medical attention.
The clot turns into a blood infection. It spreads rapidly, causing severe pain to your extremities. It feels as if your “skin is on fire.”
Then, within 10 days you are dead.
Can it happen? Absolutely yes. We are handling just such a case.
The dog bite spread a bacterium known as Capnocytophaga Canimorsus. This bacterium is commonly found in dog and cat saliva, and it can cause serious problems in humans.
Once the person is infected, he or she becomes increasingly unwell, with initial lethargy, tiredness, listlessness, and subsequent fevers, rigors and embolic events, including necrosis of the extremities (i.e., tissue dies). Multi-system organ failure follows (Hore, 2001). In these scenarios, infection is often fatal, with mortality rates in the order of 30%.
There are cases reported where a dog lick to a person’s exposed wound has caused the bacterium to spread in a human and then cause death.
In our case, a man was bitten on the finger. He died within 10 days. His family is devastated. The dog owner is legally liable for this wrongful death. All dog owners are strictly liable for their animal’s bites and attacks, except in limited circumstances.
If you are bitten by a dog, no matter how small the wound, please get prompt medical attention. It may save your life.
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