Woman, 26, left battling life-threatening knee infection after freak rooster attack
The 26-year-old, who kept birds at her home in Switzerland, initially thought nothing of the small graze on her right knee left by the angry bird.
1
She immediately cleaned and disinfected the wound before getting on with her day.
But by the following morning, her knee had swelled up, turned red and become so painful she was forced to rush to hospital.
Just a few months earlier, the unlucky woman had been treated in hospital with antibiotics after a cat bite.
On inspection, doctors at Canton Hospital Basel-Land in Liestal, spotted a tiny lesion just above her inner knee.
Writing in the BMC Infectious Diseases, the medics said the mark looked superficial at first.
They would later discover the rooster's beak had punctured deep into the joint, causing serious internal damage.
Tests on blood from her joint revealed she was suffering from septic arthritis, a serious joint infection.
If left untreated, the infection can rapidly destroy bone and cartilage, causing permanent disability, and in some rare cases, it can be fatal.
In the operating theatre, surgeons discovered the peck had gone all the way through the joint capsule.
Surgeons flushed the knee with sterile solution, cleaned the damaged cartilage, and removed loose bits of bone.
Bizarre medical case reports
During the procedure, fluid spurted back out through the original wound, suggesting the beak had pierced the joint completely.
Tests revealed the infection was caused by Enterococcus faecium, a rare bug that lives in the guts of animals and is typically seen on farms.
It was likely transferred from the rooster's dirty beak straight into the joint, the doctors treating her said.
The woman took a further nine days of oral antibiotics and made a rapid recovery.
At her two-month check-up, she could do deep squats with no pain. Ten months on, she's still symptom-free.
"This is the first reported case of a rooster attack leading to bacterial septic arthritis," the authors wrote.
They said the case "impressively illustrates the underestimation of the depth of penetrating wounds, if they are only assessed externally."
What is septic arthritis?
Septic arthritis is a serious joint infection.
It is caused by bacteria or a virus entering the joint, either through an injury, injection, surgery, or bloodstream.
Symptoms include:
Fever
Joint pain
Joint swelling
If left untreated, it can destroy cartilage and bone within days, leading to permanent damage. It can also be fatal.
Treatment usually involves urgent surgery to wash out the joint, followed by weeks of antibiotics.
Physio may be necessary to get the joint moving again.
Common causes include Staph aureus, but in animal-related injuries, other bugs like Enterococcus or even Pasteurella can be involved.
Source: NHS & John Hopkins Medicine
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
I'm a 29-year-old who spends £600 a month (including £375 on gym memberships) to look this ripped
As a 29-year-old woman, you'd think my biggest outgoings would be clothes, nights out, beauty treatments and my Octopus Energy bill. But those cost a snip compared to the £375.97 I spend on gym memberships each month. I don't get blow-dries or Botox (yet) and I rarely go clubbing. I'm more concerned about looking ripped while maintaining a healthy mind space, and I'm willing to spend a hefty chunk of my salary each year to get it.
Telegraph
17 hours ago
- Telegraph
Are people's lives really more stressful than they were 30 years ago?
It may be, as recently reported in this paper, that many feel the current (alleged) mental health crisis to be 'overblown', but there must be something seriously amiss when, as the latest figures reveal, 8.6 million adults in England now take antidepressants. Almost more extraordinary still, this is twice as many as a decade ago and eight times more than back in the 1990s. Certainly much has changed over the past 30 years, not necessarily for the better, but people's lives can scarcely have become so much more stressful as to trigger an epidemic of gloom and despondency. This leaves two possible explanations for that eightfold rise in numbers. Either doctors have become much more diligent in seeking out and treating those suffering from depression, who were previously overlooked. Or more probably, this is yet a further instance of the phenomenon of medicalisation – in this case attaching a psychiatric label to the emotional state of unhappiness which is indeed common enough. The most commonly prescribed class of antidepressants, the SSRIs (such as Prozac) are, as many will know, psycho-stimulants boosting the levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain. While they are certainly effective in improving the mood of the truly depressed and the legions of the unhappy alike, they will also inevitably be exposed to the hazards of their potential adverse effects, highlighted by the current, acrimonious controversy over their prevalence and severity. Put (very) simply, serotonin serves multifarious functions besides its role in influencing mood. In the brain it is involved in memory, pain perception and sexual pleasure, as well as propagating the nerve impulses controlling the rate and contractility of the heart muscle and the motility of the gut. Prolonged stimulation of those serotonin receptors with SSRIs necessarily alters their sensitivity, predisposing, when the time comes to discontinue them, to a withdrawal syndrome referred to by the mnemonic FINISH – flu-like symptoms, insomnia, nausea, imbalance, sensory disturbance and hyper-arousal. Or as one woman described it more bluntly, 'physical and emotional turmoil, dizziness, exhaustion, electric shock sensations and suicidal thoughts'. Organisations such as the Royal College of Psychiatrists maintained this withdrawal syndrome to be 'usually mild, resolving within a couple of weeks'. This complacency was challenged successfully back in 2019 when it emerged that, on the contrary, more than half deemed their symptoms 'severe' persisting in some for three months or more. Not so, according to researchers at King's College London last month who maintained their interpretation of the relevant evidence suggest the symptoms 'cannot be judged as significant' – a claim that critics argue 'could cause considerable harm'. And so the dispute rumbles on though the current state of uncertainty only emphasises the folly of that upward spiral in prescribing these potent drugs so insouciantly to so many. The best remedy for nosebleeds The nuisance of a nosebleed is usually readily terminated by pinching the nose between finger and thumb for 15 minutes. Simpler still, for those in whom they are recurrent is a swimmer's nose clip that can be kept in place for as long as is necessary 'does not cause the finger aching associated with manual compression and is equally effective in children and adults,' suggests Phillip Turner, a casualty doctor. Better certainly than the traditional 'home remedy' of dangling a set of cold keys down the back of the neck – though a correspondent to The New Scientist some time ago suggested this might terminate the bleeding by inducing a reflex constriction of the blood vessels of the nasal lining. Improbable, one might think but subsequently confirmed by researchers at the University of Dresden. Investigating the effect of applying an ice pack to the back of the neck they found, sure enough, this resulted in a marked diminution in blood flow through the nasal blood vessels most susceptible to spontaneous bleeding.
Daily Mail
17 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Girl, 3, suffers dangerous reaction after being exposed to trans dad's hormone drugs
A toddler grew breasts and began experiencing signs of early puberty after she was accidentally exposed to her transgender father's hormone therapy. The unnamed child, 3, was brought to doctors in Denmark after showing signs of extremely early puberty that had persisted for six months, including enlarged breasts and nipples and premature vaginal discharge. Her father told physicians the pair had frequent skin-to-skin contact, a key part of bonding. The parent, however, was also undergoing estrogen therapy as part of a gender transition from man to woman. The father used estrogen cream across their body, including chest, abdomen, shoulders and thighs daily. Doctors warned that the girl had been absorbing the estrogen, a female sex hormone, from the skin contact, triggering premature puberty. This set off a cascade of potentially dangerous side effects. Premature puberty in females, before the ages of eight years, can lead to a higher risk of certain cancers, including breast and endometrial cancers, mental health problems, behavioral issues, eating disorders and substance abuse. The father had used a spray containing 6.12mg of estradiol, the most potent form of estrogen, on both forearms daily. But seven months before the child was taken to the doctor, the father had switched to using a 3.75mg estradiol gel. Along with enlarged breasts and nipples as a result of the exposure, an ultrasound revealed her uterus and endometrium, or lining of the uterus, had increased to a size seen in older females. Her bone age was estimated to be 7 years old, while she was 3ft 6in tall and weighed 43lbs, the doctors reported. The average three-year-old in the US is between 2ft 10in and 3ft 4in tall and weighs around 26 to 38lbs. To treat the case, doctors asked the father to switch from rubbing in a gel to using a patch on the skin to receive estrogen. They reported that after the change was made the girl experienced a regression of breast development, and a normalization of growth speed and pelvic size. In the study, the researchers from Aalborg University Hospital said: 'Transgender persons should be thoroughly informed of the risk of transmission of transdermal hormones and be advised to wash hands, use gloves and avoid skin contact shortly after hormone application. 'Patients with children must be warned of the risk and Gender Clinics should consider the possibility of prescribing alternative routes of administration such as tablets or patches in high-risk patients.' About 1.5million Americans identify as transgender, although it is not clear how many of these are parents or use estrogen gel. Women may also use estrogen gel to combat symptoms of the menopause, although this tends to be at lower doses. In a similar case revealed in Sweden last month, a 10-month-old baby girl grew a 'micropenis' after she was exposed to her father's testosterone. Her father had been using the testosterone to boost levels of the hormone, and rubbing it into his body using a gel. He was also practicing skin-to-skin contact with his baby, leading the testosterone to be passed to the infant. Revealing the case from 2023 in a report in a journal, the team warned parents should be 'thoroughly informed' of the risks of transferring hormones to their children. They advised washing hands after the application of hormones, wearing gloves, and avoiding close contact immediately after use. In high risk cases, they added, clinics providing care for transgender patients should consider alternative treatments, such as tablets or patches.
