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Scratches can be cuts, scrapes, slight damage to the continuity of the skin surface, sometimes caused by living organisms from the human environment, incl. beak or claws, which can become a gateway for various infections.
Scratches and Cat Scratch Disease
Cat scratch disease (as the name suggests) is a condition for which the gates of infection and enabling the disease process are scratched by the cat.
The disease is likely caused by a bacterium Bartonella henselae, and the reservoir of the germs are cats (90%), as well as dogs and other animals. Infection occurs not only due to bites or scratches by a sick animal, insect bites, but also from being injured by plant spines, hedgehogs, splinters, etc. Cat scratch disease is observed in Europe, the United States, Australia. Its occurrence was found to be seasonal – most cases are recorded in the summer.
symptoms
The incubation (incubation) period of the disease is 7-12 days, after this time, non-healing inflammatory lumps form at the wound site, which transform into a vesicle with a scab, and after a further 10-12 days there is an enlargement of the surrounding lymph nodes, which may undergo suppuration and require surgical intervention.
The primary change disappears spontaneously.
In most patients, cat scratch disease is fever-free and self-limiting. Some patients may experience a slight increase in body temperature, general weakness, headaches, joint pain or skin lesions like erythema nodosum. Complications in the course of this disease have been observed from time to time, such as:
- encephalitis,
- osteolytic changes,
- thrombocytopenia.
Scratch treatment
It is used topically to treat scratches anti-inflammatory compresses, infusions of analgesic and antipyretic mixturesand in patients with purulent complications, also antibiotics. Symptoms of the disease disappear after a few weeks, sometimes months.