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Pandemic Puppies: Man's Best Friend or Public Health Problem? A Multidatabase Study

INTRODUCTION: The public health implications of the COVID-19 pandemic reach beyond those of the disease itself. Various centers have anecdotally reported increases in the incidence of dog bite injuries which predominate in pediatric populations. The reasons for this increase are likely multifactoria...

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Autores principales: Habarth-Morales, Theodore E., Rios-Diaz, Arturo J., Caterson, Edward J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Academic Press 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9576631/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35378364
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2022.02.041
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author Habarth-Morales, Theodore E.
Rios-Diaz, Arturo J.
Caterson, Edward J.
author_facet Habarth-Morales, Theodore E.
Rios-Diaz, Arturo J.
Caterson, Edward J.
author_sort Habarth-Morales, Theodore E.
collection PubMed
description INTRODUCTION: The public health implications of the COVID-19 pandemic reach beyond those of the disease itself. Various centers have anecdotally reported increases in the incidence of dog bite injuries which predominate in pediatric populations. The reasons for this increase are likely multifactorial and include an increase in canine adoptions, remote learning, and psychosocial stressors induced by lockdowns. We hypothesized that there was a significant increase in the proportion of dog bite injuries at our institution and within a nationally representative cohort. METHODS: We queried our electronic health record and the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) for all records pertaining to dog bites between 2015 and 2020, and the annual incidence was calculated. Poisson regression was then used to estimate whether there was a significant difference in the adjusted risk ratio for each year. RESULTS: The institutional and national cohorts revealed relative increases in the incidence of dog bite injury of 243 and 147.9 per 100,000 over the study period, respectively. Both cohorts observed significant increases of 44% and 25% in the annual incidence relative to 2019, respectively. Poisson regression revealed a significantly elevated adjusted relative risk in the institutional cohort for 2020 (2.664, CI: 2.076-3.419, P < 0.001). The national cohort also revealed an increase (1.129, CI: 1.091-1.169, P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: A nationwide increase in the incidence of dog bite injuries among children was observed during COVID-19 in 2020. These findings suggest that dog bites remain a public health problem that must be addressed by public health agencies.
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spelling pubmed-95766312022-10-18 Pandemic Puppies: Man's Best Friend or Public Health Problem? A Multidatabase Study Habarth-Morales, Theodore E. Rios-Diaz, Arturo J. Caterson, Edward J. J Surg Res Pediatric Surgery INTRODUCTION: The public health implications of the COVID-19 pandemic reach beyond those of the disease itself. Various centers have anecdotally reported increases in the incidence of dog bite injuries which predominate in pediatric populations. The reasons for this increase are likely multifactorial and include an increase in canine adoptions, remote learning, and psychosocial stressors induced by lockdowns. We hypothesized that there was a significant increase in the proportion of dog bite injuries at our institution and within a nationally representative cohort. METHODS: We queried our electronic health record and the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) for all records pertaining to dog bites between 2015 and 2020, and the annual incidence was calculated. Poisson regression was then used to estimate whether there was a significant difference in the adjusted risk ratio for each year. RESULTS: The institutional and national cohorts revealed relative increases in the incidence of dog bite injury of 243 and 147.9 per 100,000 over the study period, respectively. Both cohorts observed significant increases of 44% and 25% in the annual incidence relative to 2019, respectively. Poisson regression revealed a significantly elevated adjusted relative risk in the institutional cohort for 2020 (2.664, CI: 2.076-3.419, P < 0.001). The national cohort also revealed an increase (1.129, CI: 1.091-1.169, P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: A nationwide increase in the incidence of dog bite injuries among children was observed during COVID-19 in 2020. These findings suggest that dog bites remain a public health problem that must be addressed by public health agencies. Academic Press 2022-08 2022-04-01 /pmc/articles/PMC9576631/ /pubmed/35378364 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2022.02.041 Text en Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Pediatric Surgery
Habarth-Morales, Theodore E.
Rios-Diaz, Arturo J.
Caterson, Edward J.
Pandemic Puppies: Man's Best Friend or Public Health Problem? A Multidatabase Study
title Pandemic Puppies: Man's Best Friend or Public Health Problem? A Multidatabase Study
title_full Pandemic Puppies: Man's Best Friend or Public Health Problem? A Multidatabase Study
title_fullStr Pandemic Puppies: Man's Best Friend or Public Health Problem? A Multidatabase Study
title_full_unstemmed Pandemic Puppies: Man's Best Friend or Public Health Problem? A Multidatabase Study
title_short Pandemic Puppies: Man's Best Friend or Public Health Problem? A Multidatabase Study
title_sort pandemic puppies: man's best friend or public health problem? a multidatabase study
topic Pediatric Surgery
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9576631/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35378364
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2022.02.041
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