Henrik Kriegbaum Plettner Danish man dies 4 years after a pet cat bite led to an infection entering his bloodstream and flesh-eating bacteria setting in. Had delayed treatment.
‘Don’t take any chances…’ A Danish man whose finger was bitten by a pet cat four years ago has died after flesh-eating bacteria infected his blood.
Henrik Kriegbaum Plettner then 29, adopted the feline and her kittens from a shelter in 2018 and was bitten on his index finger after trying to move one of the kittens.
He thought nothing of it until he realised his hand had swollen to twice its size within a few hours.
He rang a doctor but was told to wait until the following day, and after a number of consultations he ended up at Denmark’s Kolding hospital according to the dailymail.
He was hospitalised there for a month, during which he underwent 15 operations.
Necrotizing fasciitis
But four months after the operations, the finger still did not function properly and doctors decided to amputate it.
Despite this, the 33-year-old’s health began to decline, with his mother telling local media: ‘He had very fluctuating health.
‘He had a weakened immune system, pneumonia, gout and diabetes.
‘The cat had bitten right into a blood vessel, and when a cat bites and pulls its tooth out, the hole closes and the bacteria spreads.’
Tissue infections in cat bite wounds are commonly caused by pathogenic bacterium known as Pasteurella multocida.
In certain cases, the bitten area can sometimes lead to a rare bacterial infection called necrotizing fasciitis which can be fatal.
As the wound had closed almost immediately after Plettner was bitten, the bacteria had entered the 33 year old man’s bloodstream through the vein and stayed in the body where it began to spread.
‘Don’t take any chances.’
Plettner’s family say he died in October but they have now gone public so that others take cat bites seriously.
The man’s widow Desirée said: ‘We knew that he was doing badly.
‘However, we had no idea that he was so seriously ill.
‘Go to the doctor after a bite, don’t think, oh, that’s just a cat.
‘Don’t take any chances.’
In an interview with Germany’s RTL, GP Dr. Christoph Specht spoke on the potential dangers of being bitten by a cat.
He said: ‘A cat bite can become infected and become problematic because of bacteria. These bacteria do not bother the cat in the mouth. They do, if they get on the skin.
‘Some don’t do anything to the skin and it only becomes problematic when they get into the blood or into the joints or bones of the person.
‘Nevertheless, a cat bite is like an infected syringe that gets into our tissue.’
