Bite

For other uses of "Bite", see Bite (disambiguation).

A bite is a woundreceived from the mouth(and in particular, the teeth) of an animal. Animals may bite in self-defense, or in an attempt to predate food. Other bite attacks may be apparently unprovoked.

Bite wounds raise a number of medicalconcerns for the physicianor first aiderincluding:

• Generalized tissue damage due to tearing and scratching.
• Serious hemorrhageif major blood vessels are pierced.
• Infectionby bacteriaor other pathogens, including rabies.
• Introduction of venominto the wound by venomous animals such as some snakes.
• Introduction of other irritants into the wound, causing inflammationand itching.

Examples

• Fleabites are responsible for the transmission of bubonic plague.
• Mosquitobites are responsible for the transmission of malaria.
• The bites of various animals may transmit rabies.
• The most frequent animal implicated in bite attacks that require medical treatment is Homo sapiens. Prior to antibiotics, serious human bites to the hand often resulted in amputation of a finger (in about 20% of cases).

Treatment

Bite wounds are washed, ideally with povidone-iodine soap and water. The injury is then loosely bandaged, but is not sutured due to risk of infection.

Animal bites inflicted by carnivores(other than rodents) are considered possible cases of rabies. The animal is caught alive or dead with its head preserved, so the head can later be analyzed to detect the disease. Signs of rabies include foaming at the mouth, self-mutilation, growling, jerky behavior, and red eyes. If the animal lives for ten days and does not develop rabies, then it is probable that no infection has occurred.

If the animal is gone, prophylactic rabies treatment is recommended in most places. Certain places, such as Hawaii, are known not to have native rabies. Treatment is generally available in North America, Britainand the Northern Europeanstates.

Snakebite
Many of the world?s snakes are not considered dangerous to humans; however, even a bite from a ?safe? species may cause significant injury to the victim if the wound is not treated properly. See snakebitesfor much more information.

Spiderbite
The black widow spiderand some scorpionsare considered dangerous to humans, although mostly to small children and elderly adults. Only the Sydney funnel-web spiderof Australiais frequently dangerous to adults, and it resides only within 100 miles of SydneyAustralia. Antivenins are available in the United Statesfor black widow spiders and the dangerous scorpions native to the region. See spiderbitefor much more information.

See also

• Snakebite
• Spiderbite
• Wilderness first aid
• Insect stings

External link

• Treating human bites

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bite Wikipedia article Bite.