It was all over the news, striking fear into the heart of cat lovers and animal advocates everywhere: A study in the Journal of Hand Surgery found one out of every three cat bites results in hospitalization.

If those of us who work with cats in shelters thought that seemed a bit high, no wonder. It is.

Writing in the Germs and Worms blog, Dr. Scott Weese of the Ontario Veterinary College's Centre for Public Health and Zoonoses said the media got it wrong:

A variety of complications can occur after cat bites, and they are not something to dismiss as innocuous.

But hospitalization of 1/3 of people that are bitten? Not a chance.

Let’s see what the paper actually said:

The paper is entitled “Cat bite infections of the hand: assessment of morbidity and predictors of severe infection.” It was a review of 193 patients that were presented to one hospital with cat bite injuries to the hand.

• Point 1: The study population is people who went to the hospital for a cat bite, not all people who were bitten.
• Point 2: The study only looked at people bitten on the hand(s). That’s a common site to be bitten by a cat, but it’s also a high-risk site for complications because hands have lots of sensitive and fairly superficial structures (e.g., bones, joints, tendon sheaths, nerves) that are more likely to cause problems if they get infected.

So, it’s pretty clear that 1/3 of all bites don’t result in hospitalization. In reality it's a much smaller percentage, but you really don’t want to be part of that small group, so bite avoidance and proper post-bite first aid are still very important.

It's a terrific article; read the rest here.