Tropical Travel Trouble 002 Rabies
LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog
LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog - Emergency medicine and critical care medical education blog
aka Tropical Travel Trouble 002
A 19 year old gap year student has returned from India to your emergency department reporting she was bitten by a monkey at a temple. A selfie gone wrong but it scored 1000+ likes on Facebook…
She is concerned because one of the Facebook comments suggested she may have rabies! A quick Google search suggested 60,000 people a year DIE from rabies.
Should she be worried? Should you be worried?
Questions
Q1. What other questions should you ask in regards to an animal bite to evaluate her risk of contracting rabies?
Answer and interpretation
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Key questions and concepts:
Was there a bite or a lick to a mucous membrane or open wound (therefore a chance of transmission)?
How proximal to the brain is the bite? Neck bites are higher risk – reduced length of time between exposure and clinical disease
Could the animal have the disease, either due to location, type of animal, unvaccinated or clinically unwell? A vaccinated well looking dog in France is very low risk, a stray dog that is frothing at the mouth in India is very high risk
Can the animal be observed or tested? Usually by 15 days a diseased animal will die, it will most certainly be unwell. This either gives us a clue to potential d...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Neil Long Tags: Clinical Cases Tropical Medicine rabies Source Type: blogs
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