Animal-related injuries in hospitalized patients

Introduction: Injury from animal attacks is an important public health problem with high morbidity and mortality. As we cannot neglect or underestimate these hazardous conditions, we aimed to assess animal-related injuries in Iranian patients and compare the results.Methods: In this cross-sectional study conducted on data from the National Trauma Registry of Iran, trauma patients admitted to the hospital due to animal attacks from January 15, 2018, to November 1, 2021, were assessed. A checklist gathered data consisting of baseline characteristics such as sex, age, activity, place at the time of the attack, and injury site. In addition, we extracted the clinical features of these patients, including injury severity score, Glasgow coma scale, intensive care unit (ICU) admission, hospital length of stay, surgery, and discharge status.Results: One hundred thirty-one patients were registered in the study. Most of the patients were male (80.9%), aged 16 to 44 years (59.5%), and encountered animal attacks when they were in agricultural areas (45%). Ninety-six patients (73.3%) underwent surgery, and three were hospitalized in ICUs. We recorded 172 injuries, consisting of 92 (53.5%) injuries in the upper extremities as the most common region of the body. The males were aged 16-44 years (66%), and the females were aged 45-65 (52%) (P=0.005). Fifty percent of males and 24% of females were injured in the agricultural areas. Moreover, 24% of females and 6.6% of males were injured at home.Conclusion: This study showed a high incidence animal attacks in Iran. Most injuries were in middle aged males and in the agricultural area.