ANIMAL-RELATED INJURIES: EPIDEMIOLOGICAL AND METEOROLOGICAL FEATURES

This is a retrospective and registry-based descriptive study including, animal-related injuries represented by the most crowded Emergency Department (ED) in Eastern Turkey over a period of two years. Animal-related injuries were 0.2% of all ED admittances; dominant in males and were high ill summer. 68% of the subjects were exposed to mammalians. Most prominent injuries were dog bites (30%), horse (22%) and livestock-related injuries (12%). Hospitalization was significantly higher in mammalian animal injuries compared to non-mammalian injuries, The highest hospitalization rate was meaured for equine-related injuries(15%). In our bite series, dogs were the primary source (69%)while horse-bites (17%) took the second place and they, were more than two told more when compared with cats (7.5%). Dog bites were prominent in children, thus both parents and children should be educated. Insect and snake-related injuries were both low in number and relatively silent in prognosis. Highest temperatures oil site were determined for tick-bites, unspecified insect stings and bee stings, respectively. The highest humidity was determined for dog-bites, cat-bites and scorpion stings, respectively. Non-mammalian and sting injuries had higher temperature and lower humidity measurements compared to mammalian and bite injuries. Geographical and meteorological factors may directly affect descriptive epidemiology of animal-related injuries.