A Retrospective Data Analysis on Marine Animal Injuries at a Large, Multi-Site Medical System

With increasing numbers of human-animal interactions, there has been an increase in animal-related injuries. While canine bites are the most commonly reported animal injury, little data exists in regard to the other classes of animals, particularly marine life. The last comprehensive report on injuries related to noncanine bites and stings seen in emergency departments (EDs) across the US was between 2011 and 2015.

We performed a retrospective analysis from 2014-2019 on marine injuries from a large hospital network with over 180 hospitals, 100 freestanding EDs, and 170 urgent care centers to provide an update on the volume and greatest contributors to these types of injuries being treated in US hospital EDs. We used existing, de-identified data from HCA's EDW using Teradata SQL. All data were descriptive. Of the 4092 patients aged 18 and older included in this study; 2692 were male (65.8%) and 1400 were female (34.2%).

Of the total, 4010 (98.0%) patients were discharged home, 15 (0.4%) were admitted, 66 (1.6%) were classified as other, and 1 (0.02%) was referred to long-term care. The majority of injuries were caused by stingrays (1196, 29.23%), catfish (974, 23.8%), jellyfish (421, 10.3%), and other fish (541, 13.2%). The majority of injuries from all encounters occurred on the foot (1449, 35.4%) and hand (1181, 28.9%). The second and third quarters of each year were found to have the highest number of injuries (1290, 31.5% and 1742, 42.5%, respectively).

Our results demonstrated that the majority of injuries were due to stingrays, jellyfish, and small fish, specifically catfish. As expected, the majority of injuries occurred on hands and feet. They occurred mostly during the summer.