A Danish man whose finger was bitten by a cat four years ago has died after he was infected by flesh eating bacteria.
In 2018 Henrik Kriegbaum Plettner adopted a cat and her kittens from a shelter and was bitten when he tried to move one of them.
He initially thought nothing of it, but his hand had swollen to twice its normal size in few hours. He therefore rang a doctor who told him to wait until the following day.
He underwent many consultations and he ended up in Denmark’s Kolding hospital, where he stayed for a month while he underwent 15 operations.
It was believed that 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.
In Mr Plettner’s case his wound had closed almost immediately after he was bitten, which meant that the bacteria had entered his bloodstream throughput a vein and began to spread.
According to Mr Plettner’s family he died in October but they have gone public now so that others can take cat bites seriously.
His ex-wife, Desirée said that it was vital that people took cat bites seriously.
‘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,’ she concluded.
Despite medical efforts and care, he died four years later – ‘flesh-eating bacteria’ entered his blood after a nip on the finger by the cat.
