Human bite is not safe, visit the hospital

A 66-year-old man, whose name we will not reveal for ethical reasons, was brought to the hospital after being bitten by his own son.

It was at dusk, almost a week ago. The resident of Kiwalani, Dar es Salaam, was brought to our facility due to a human bite—not a dog bite!

Are you astonished? Do not. Biting is a physical action. It’s also an attack and an age-appropriate behaviour or reaction for toddlers.

Have you ever been bitten, who/what bit you? Was it a human being, cat or a dog or a snake? Habitual biting for a person above the age prescribed above might require professional intervention. Bite back? Of course, this old man didn’t bite back, with biblical imagery I would say he didn’t pay evil for evil.

This scenario happened 3 weeks prior to hospital visit, he was bitten by his son aged 15 years. The old man was trying to control his son as part of physical restrain. He also wanted to rescue property from destruction and other people who could have become next victims.

In consequence of this intervention, the old man sustained injury to the right hand. This injured part is called volar aspect, the underside of the hand along the right thumb and some muscles were severely damaged, the wound looked physically and medically unattractive despite serial management options done at a remote hospital, the incident stunned many people since we are more often than not used to animal bites, and snake bites and insect bites, and love bites.

The wound was stinking, and it had pus; a lot of dead tissues were seen. Thus the doctors’ plan was emergency surgical debridement and taking sample/pus swab for culture and sensitivity testing, however in the interim, antibiotics were prescribed and given to the patient.

Every time we tried to ask him about what actually transpired, the old man was not willing to tell us in detail, he could just respond curtly. He at least said he was bitten in the course of attempting to control his son who he thought possibly had epilepsy, however the events as narrated by other relatives looked like this son had a psychiatric problem rather than epilepsy.

Human bite can either be quite serious or relatively harmless, it’s important to fathom out which one require aggressive management, human bite can be intentional or accidental.

How about love bites? Can they be part of human bite, do they require someone to go hospital?

Love bites e.g hickeys may meet the criteria as human bite according to www.emedicine health, but it is asserted that if it involves bruising only with no skin break, its innocuous, other love bites (from someone you consider the apple of your eye) can cross the line into intentionally inflicted wounds, and these can be more serious however any bite in the genital areas in children should be construed as a possible sign of abuse rather than love bite.

It doesn’t matter whether its animal bite or human bite, you must visit the hospital for that, regardless of the size of the wound, the biggest worry is always about the possibility of introducing bacterial infections into the wound since mouth is said to harbour a lot bacteria as it happened in the story narrated above.

On the other hand send psychiatric patients to hospital, physical restrain will not help to treat the condition.

The author is a medical doctor, public health activist and researcher based in Dar es Salaam.