A Danish young man died after being bitten by a cat on his finger four years ago, which caused swelling in his hand and infection with flesh-eating bacteria in his blood.
Henrik Kriegbaum-Plettner adopted a cat and her kittens from a shelter in 2018, and was bitten on his index finger after trying to move one of the kittens, reports a local Arabic daily.
Although he didn’t notice it at first, within a few hours he realized his hand had swollen to twice its normal size.
The young man called the doctor after that, but he was told to wait until the next day, and after a series of consultations, he ended up in Kolding Hospital in Denmark, where he stayed for a month during which he underwent 15 surgeries. But four months after the surgery, his finger still wasn’t working properly and the doctors decided to amputate it.
However, the 33-year-old’s health began to deteriorate, as his mother told local media: “His health was very volatile. He was suffering from a weakened immune system, pneumonia, gout and diabetes.”
She indicated that the cat had hit a blood vessel, “and when the cat bites and takes out its teeth, the hole closes and bacteria spread.”
Tissue infections in cat bite wounds are usually caused by the pathogenic bacteria Pasteurella multocida.
In some cases, this can lead to a rare bacterial infection called necrotizing fasciitis that can be fatal.
Necrotizing fasciitis, commonly known as carnivorous disease, flesh-eating bacteria or flesh-eating bacteria syndrome, is a rare infection of the deeper layers of the skin and subcutaneous tissue, easily spreading throughout the fascial plane within the subcutaneous tissue.
When the wound closed immediately after the man was bitten, the bacteria entered his bloodstream through a vein and remained in the body where it began to spread.
Pletner’s family says he died in October, but has now announced the cause of his death so that others can take cat bites more seriously.