These injuries necessitated a multi-disciplinary approach with multiple treatments and procedures, ultimately requiring placement of a dermal regeneration template (DRT) and subsequent split thickness skin grafting (STSG) with excellent functional result. She sustained major injuries to the left upper and lower extremities, face, back, shoulder, and ear with recognizable skin loss at the sites, as well as significant subcutaneous tissue and muscle damage to her extremities. Though the entity of animal attacks has been reported in the past, this case dictates presentation given the suspicious circumstances surrounding the attack, the involvement of her care requiring a multidisciplinary surgical approach via trauma surgery and plastic surgery, multiple extensive interventions, and the excellent take of the split thickness skin graft (STSG) after the use of a dermal regeneration template (DRT).Īnimal bites are a dangerous entity that come with serious health risks and costs, as well as injuries resulting in pain, tissue damage, and disability often requiring frequent and multiple interventions, perhaps ending in severe infection and death . Attacks are reported in various forms, including: bites, stings, scratches, pecks, mauls, tramples, falls, thrown from, crushes, or gore . From this variety of modalities, assaults by canines are the most common, with a reported nearly four and one half million dog bites occurring annually in the United States . Approximately 900 000 people annually are treated in EDs for noncanine injuries, primarily from cats, arachnids, bees, or unknown species, where cat bites account for 400 000 of these attacks . Given the high frequency of attacks as well as significant health concerns and difficult management associated with animal wounds, we report a patient who presented following an attack by an unknown species. We report herein the traumatic mauling of a woman by a reported unknown animal. Serious attacks frequently lead to infection, sepsis, pain, loss of sensation or mobility, operative interventions, and amputations of affected limbs. With animal attacks of high intensity, there is often significant scratching, tearing, shearing, with destruction of the skin, subcutaneous tissues, muscles, and bone. The severity of animal attacks can range from a small insect sting to mauling by large animal, and even death. Animal attacks are a worrisome and dangerous entity that occur at high volumes and are evaluated frequently by ER physicians, primary care physicians, trauma teams, acute care surgeons, and plastic surgeons.
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