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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Although he didn’t notice it at first, within a few hours he realized his hand had swollen to twice its normal size.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.”<\/p>\n
Tissue infections in cat bite wounds are usually caused by the pathogenic bacteria Pasteurella multocida.<\/p>\n
In some cases, this can lead to a rare bacterial infection called necrotizing fasciitis that can be fatal.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":115331,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-world-news"],"yoast_head":"\n