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An Audit of Patients with Dog-bite Wounds Presenting to a Tertiary Level Hospital Emergency Department in South Africa

Background Dog-bite wounds are a common emergency department (ED) presentation, accounting for approximately 5% of traumatic wounds in the US. However, only 20-50% of patients actually present to the ED for medical attention following a dog-bite wound. Methods This was a transverse, retrospective au...

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Autores principales: Nkomo, Mzamo, Mahomed, Zeyn, Laher, Abdullah E
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Cureus 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6996530/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32042530
http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.6558
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author Nkomo, Mzamo
Mahomed, Zeyn
Laher, Abdullah E
author_facet Nkomo, Mzamo
Mahomed, Zeyn
Laher, Abdullah E
author_sort Nkomo, Mzamo
collection PubMed
description Background Dog-bite wounds are a common emergency department (ED) presentation, accounting for approximately 5% of traumatic wounds in the US. However, only 20-50% of patients actually present to the ED for medical attention following a dog-bite wound. Methods This was a transverse, retrospective audit of medical records of patients that had presented to the Tembisa Provincial Academic Hospital ED with dog-bite wounds during the 2014 calendar year. Results Of the 269 patients that were included in the study, 148 (55%) were male. The median age of all study patients was 27 years (range: 3-77 years). Most patients presented between 18h00-24h00 (n = 111, 41.3%). Most wounds were sustained on the lower limbs (n = 80, 68.18%), followed by the upper limbs (n = 74, 28.03%). Patients who were ≤12 years of age had a higher prevalence of buttock/perineum (p = 0.0002) and head/face/neck (p = 0.009) wounds, whereas patients who were >12 years of age had a higher prevalence of lower limb wounds (p = 0.0006). Only 15 (5.6%) wounds were sutured, and antibiotics were prescribed to 120 (45.1%) patients. Tetanus toxoid vaccine (TTV) and the first dose of the rabies vaccine (RV) were administered to 152 (57.4%) and 240 (89.1%) patients, respectively. Conclusion Children are more likely to present with wounds to the head/face/neck or buttock/perineum regions, while adults are more likely to present with wounds to the lower limbs. Proper strategies should be implemented to ensure that clinicians adhere to the current antibiotics protocols as well as rabies and tetanus post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP)-prescribing guidelines. 
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spelling pubmed-69965302020-02-10 An Audit of Patients with Dog-bite Wounds Presenting to a Tertiary Level Hospital Emergency Department in South Africa Nkomo, Mzamo Mahomed, Zeyn Laher, Abdullah E Cureus Emergency Medicine Background Dog-bite wounds are a common emergency department (ED) presentation, accounting for approximately 5% of traumatic wounds in the US. However, only 20-50% of patients actually present to the ED for medical attention following a dog-bite wound. Methods This was a transverse, retrospective audit of medical records of patients that had presented to the Tembisa Provincial Academic Hospital ED with dog-bite wounds during the 2014 calendar year. Results Of the 269 patients that were included in the study, 148 (55%) were male. The median age of all study patients was 27 years (range: 3-77 years). Most patients presented between 18h00-24h00 (n = 111, 41.3%). Most wounds were sustained on the lower limbs (n = 80, 68.18%), followed by the upper limbs (n = 74, 28.03%). Patients who were ≤12 years of age had a higher prevalence of buttock/perineum (p = 0.0002) and head/face/neck (p = 0.009) wounds, whereas patients who were >12 years of age had a higher prevalence of lower limb wounds (p = 0.0006). Only 15 (5.6%) wounds were sutured, and antibiotics were prescribed to 120 (45.1%) patients. Tetanus toxoid vaccine (TTV) and the first dose of the rabies vaccine (RV) were administered to 152 (57.4%) and 240 (89.1%) patients, respectively. Conclusion Children are more likely to present with wounds to the head/face/neck or buttock/perineum regions, while adults are more likely to present with wounds to the lower limbs. Proper strategies should be implemented to ensure that clinicians adhere to the current antibiotics protocols as well as rabies and tetanus post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP)-prescribing guidelines.  Cureus 2020-01-04 /pmc/articles/PMC6996530/ /pubmed/32042530 http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.6558 Text en Copyright © 2020, Nkomo et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Emergency Medicine
Nkomo, Mzamo
Mahomed, Zeyn
Laher, Abdullah E
An Audit of Patients with Dog-bite Wounds Presenting to a Tertiary Level Hospital Emergency Department in South Africa
title An Audit of Patients with Dog-bite Wounds Presenting to a Tertiary Level Hospital Emergency Department in South Africa
title_full An Audit of Patients with Dog-bite Wounds Presenting to a Tertiary Level Hospital Emergency Department in South Africa
title_fullStr An Audit of Patients with Dog-bite Wounds Presenting to a Tertiary Level Hospital Emergency Department in South Africa
title_full_unstemmed An Audit of Patients with Dog-bite Wounds Presenting to a Tertiary Level Hospital Emergency Department in South Africa
title_short An Audit of Patients with Dog-bite Wounds Presenting to a Tertiary Level Hospital Emergency Department in South Africa
title_sort audit of patients with dog-bite wounds presenting to a tertiary level hospital emergency department in south africa
topic Emergency Medicine
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6996530/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32042530
http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.6558
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