A grandmother spent nine days in a coma before dying after her pet cat licked her, prompting a warning to other owners.
Source:News Corp Australia“Mum would sleep with the cat and obviously through the night it has licked the wound and it was the saliva going into her bloodstream that has caused the damage,” her daughter told theHer family said she woke to spent some final moments with them before falling ill and dying a day after being taken off life support.
Austin Health’s director of infectious diseases Lindsay Grayson warned people shouldn’t let their cats lick open wounds.Cats carry several lethal bacteria such as pasteurella, which can cause meningitis, as well as bartonella, which causes the so-called “cat scratch disease”. “It is a big deal and it is emerging more and more now as an unrecognised cause of heart valve infection, which is obviously fatal if untreated,” Prof Grayson told the newspaper.
“Infections related to cat bites and scratches like this person, we’d get at least one a week where somebody comes into the hospital. “It is very important that if a cat is biting or scratching you, you mention it to your GP. It immediately triggers a greater concern and a different medical approach to just a routine scratch.”
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