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Animal Bites

Animal bites may have potentially devastating consequences, including physical and emotional trauma, infection, rabies exposure, hospitalization, and, rarely, death. NC law requires animal bites be reported to local health directors. However, methods for recording and storing bite data vary among municipalities. NC does not have a statewide system for reporting and surveillance of animal bites. Additionally, many animal bites are likely not reported to the appropriate agencies. NC DETECT provides near-real-time statewide surveillance capacity to local, regional, and state level users with twice daily data feeds from NC EDs. Between 2008 and 2010, 110 to 113 EDs were submitting visit data to NC DETECT. Several animal bite-related on-line reports are available and provide aggregate and visit-level analyses customized to users' respective jurisdictions. The NC DETECT ED visit database currently provides the most comprehensive and cost-effective source of animal bite data in NC.

Objective

We describe the use of emergency department (ED) visit data collected through the North Carolina Disease Event Tracking and Epidemiologic Collection Tool (NC DETECT) for surveillance of animal bites in North Carolina (NC). Animal bite surveillance using ED visit data provides useful and timely information for public health practitioners involved in bite surveillance and prevention in NC.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on

This syndrome was designed to capture rabies PEP visits and animal bites (excluding insect, human, snake, arachnid, and fish bites).

The query is designed using ESSENCE syntax (from the query portal)

The query is designed to be run against emergency department and urgent care center data by querying the chief complaint-discharge diagnosis (CCDD) field.

The query does not include ICD-10 or SNOMED codes (we receive textual descriptions of all discharge diagnoses), but the codes could certainly be added.

 

Submitted by Anonymous on

Injuries from dog bites affect approximately 4.7 million Americans per year, causing significant societal impact. Currently dog bites are the third leading cause of homeowner insurance claims, and are estimated to cost the insurance industry $489 million annually. When insurance costs are coupled with hospitalizations and lost productivity, dog bites are estimated to cost the United States $2 billion/year. However, the true impact of dog bite injuries remains unknown since discrepancies exist in the number of dog bite injuries being found by various mechanisms, and many bites may actually go unreported. In order to evaluate the true impact of dog bite injuries, the limitations of current surveillance methods must first be delineated and understood.

Objective

To give an overview of the challenges facing dog bite injury surveillance as well as identify some potential solutions for improving surveillance mechanisms.

Submitted by rmathes on
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