WEDNESDAY, Aug. 15, 2001 (HealthDayNews) -- If you're recovering from surgery, let sleeping dogs lie -- but not with you.
Doctors from the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center report that a 59-year-old man whose surgical incision from a back operation became infected while he was recovering probably got the infection from the two dogs who shared his bed.
"This gentleman had a spinal operation where they used hardware to stabilize his spine," says Laurel Gibbs, a clinical laboratory technologist at UCSF who worked on the case. "Five days after he was discharged from the hospital he came back, and he had an infection of the surgical site."
After doctors performed an emergency incision to drain the wound, they cultured both his wound and the blood in order "to identify whether this was a sterile abscess or [whether] the fever [was} caused by something else," Gibbs says.
The patient's condition was further complicated by a heart attack, and he was transferred to the intensive care unit, where he was given prolonged oral antibiotic therapy before being released.
The culture revealed three different organisms, two of which are fairly common in wound infections. The third was the bacterium Pasteurella multocida, "which was in his bloodstream as well as the wound," Gibbs says. "That's very rare in a surgical site, but it is associated with animal bites."
Pasteurella multocida causes serious diseases in food animals and humans, according to the University of Minnesota. Blamed for causing cholera in chickens and turkeys, hemorrhagic septicemia in cattle, and atrophic rhinitis in pigs, the bug is responsible for the loss of several hundred million dollars to animal production every year.
The bug is also estimated to infect between 20 percent and 50 percent of the 1 to 2 million Americans -- primarily children -- who are bitten by dogs and cats each year.
"We asked the gentlemen and his family if he had any animals, and we found that there were two dogs that he slept with," Gibbs explains. "Pasteurella multocida is known to be a common animal flora organism -- that is, the bacteria is common in a dog's mouth and it doesn't cause the animal any harm."
Swabs of the dogs' mouths matched the DNA of the Pasteurella multocida found in the man's bloodstream and wound, Gibbs adds. "It's the only time we've ever seen this in a surgical arena at this hospital, and there's not much literature on it. It's a very infrequent cause of surgical infections."
Gibbs says they are not sure how the man was infected. "The dogs may have licked themselves and then lay on the bed, and he got the infection from the sheets. Or they may have licked him -- they may have licked his hand and then he scratched his incision. But we just don't know."
The case was presented in a research letter in the Aug. 16 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
"This is a bug that's a lot more common in cats than in dogs," says Alan Beck, director of the center for human-animal bonding at Purdue University's School of Veterinary Medicine in West Lafayette, Ind. "Pasteurella multocida is found in 30 percent of cats' mouths, which is why cat bites are invariably treated with antibiotics. It's a very ferocious kind of infection in people because it grows very well and can cause real tissue damage."
Beck says there's not much to worry about.
"This is the only case I've ever heard of," he adds. "Is there risk? There's always risk. Probably about 60 percent of dog owners in the U.S. have their dogs in the bedroom, and about half let the dog sleep on the bed. But the case described here is a very low-frequency event.
Gibbs agrees, but suggests that recuperating patients be told of the risk nevertheless.
"You basically need to treat a surgical incision by keeping the wound clean and sterile," she says. "Wash your hands and keep away from animals until you heal."
Health-care professionals should think of instructing their patients on this possibility, Gibbs adds. "It's not something they would automatically think of saying to patients, but maybe it should be."
What To Do
For more about possible diseases you can get from your pets, check out the Boston University Medical Center or the Humane Society of the United States.
