Many people who have no experience from Africa often ask us about the dangers with wild animals and snakes. To be honest it is not the animals you should worry about. During the last 5 years we have had only two or three patients with snake bites, but hundreds of patient injured by other human beings. So be aware of humans!
However bites from animals are more frequent than human bites. We have seen many patients injured by bites from hyenas, dogs, hippopotamuses, monkeys and leopards, but only one with injury after human bite.
That fellow arrived some days after a fight with his neighbor who did a “Tyson” – although in his case it was the nose - not the ear - which got molested.
It is possible to graft a piece of the ear with cartilage to cover a defect of the nose, but after cleaning and removing necrotic (dead) tissue from the wound it was clear that the defect was too large for that technique.
So what do you do? You read in the book to get guidance:
And then you go ahead
The nose could have looked better, but the patient was happy with the result.
Hopefully he will keep his nose to himself in the future!
This entry was posted
on Sunday, May 31st, 2009 at 10:54 pm and is filed under Injury.
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Many people who have no experience from Africa often ask us about the dangers with wild animals and snakes. To be honest it is not the animals you should worry about. During the last 5 years we have had only two or three patients with snake bites, but hundreds of patient injured by other human beings. So be aware of humans!
However bites from animals are more frequent than human bites. We have seen many patients injured by bites from hyenas, dogs, hippopotamuses, monkeys and leopards, but only one with injury after human bite.
That fellow arrived some days after a fight with his neighbor who did a “Tyson” – although in his case it was the nose - not the ear - which got molested.
It is possible to graft a piece of the ear with cartilage to cover a defect of the nose, but after cleaning and removing necrotic (dead) tissue from the wound it was clear that the defect was too large for that technique.
So what do you do? You read in the book to get guidance:
And then you go ahead
The nose could have looked better, but the patient was happy with the result.
Hopefully he will keep his nose to himself in the future!
Tags: human bite, local skin flap, nose defect
This entry was posted on Sunday, May 31st, 2009 at 10:54 pm and is filed under Injury. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.