Epidemiological characterization of bites: A retrospective study of dog bites to humans in Chile during 2009

Epidemiology of Dog Bite Incidents in Chile: Factors Related to the Patterns of Human-Dog Relationship

“…Of these 17,299 records, only 41.74% (7220/17,299) had information on the biting animal, which made it possible to differentiate the dogs participating in these incidents for further analysis. This percentage was lower than that reported in previous studies carried out in Chile (96.30%) (79.5%) [ 23 , 34 ] and in Iran (99.98%) [ 35 ]. In contrast, the numbers were higher than those reported in a study in India, where only 8.18% of the records had this information [ 39 ].…”

“…When analysing the incidents by region, it was observed that the largest number of records of canine bites were concentrated in the Metropolitan region with 29.22% (1909/6533), and in the Valparaíso Region with 19.25% (1911/6533). Previous studies reported a similar situation, although it was the Valparaíso region that obtained the highest percentage of records, followed by the Metropolitan region [ 23 ]. In the present study, the sum of these two regions accounts for more than half of the bite incidents registered at the national level.…”

“…These data were recorded during the period 17 September 2017 and 17 September 2018. Although there are previous studies on this problem in the country [ 23 , 32 ], this is the first study with national coverage.…”

“…This research focused specifically on dog bites as these are the ones that occur most frequently, as indicated by previous studies in Chile [ 23 , 34 ] and in other countries such as Iran [ 35 , 36 ], Korea [ 37 ] and Bosnia and Herzegovina [ 38 ].…”

“…An example of this is the case of Chile, a country that despite being classified by the UN as a country with high human development like Norway, Switzerland and the United States, belonging to the select group of the OECD and having a human-dog ratio very similar to that of the United States (CH: 4.1:1; US: 4.3:1) [ 20 , 21 ], presents a reality of dog demographics very similar to that of underdeveloped or developing countries. This last statement is based on the high percentages of dogs with owners that roam the streets (27%, 50% and 67% in cities, towns and rural areas, respectively) [ 22 ] and dogs that have no known owner (74%, 51% and 21% in cities, towns and rural areas, respectively) [ 22 ]; in the high number of dog bites (91.6%) [ 23 ] and in that the majority of canine bites occurred in the street [ 24 ]. Some of these figures coincide with those found in Kenya, where 69% of owned dogs moved without restriction [ 25 ], the majority of bite incidents were by dogs (93%) [ 26 ] and the highest number of these incidents were caused by dogs that roamed the streets freely (78%) [ 26 ].…”