Successful treatment protocol for canine fang injuries.

The most common bite injury in the United States is that of the dog and is associated with serious social and economic problems. Our series of 61 dog bite patients shows a majority of them to be in children and of the face and neck. Our treatment protocol centers on copious saline pressure irrigation, meticulous wound and wound edge debridement, repeated copious saline pressure irrigation, adequate antibiotic treatment, and close postoperative monitoring. Two hundred fifteen dog bite wounds in 61 patients were closed with this regimen with only a single wound infection. This is a wound infection rate of 0.47% and a patient infection rate of 1.6%.