When someone gets bitten by an animal, why do we need its head to tell if it has rabies before treating them (shouldn’t we treat them for rabies regardless)?
In: Biology
Because they can do testing on the brain to figure out if the animal had rabies are not. If the animal doesn’t have rabies then there is no reason to administer the rabies vaccine. As for “shouldn’t we treat them for rabies regardless” I guess you could say it would be the safer bet. However, incidents of Rabies in humans is very low and so our current system is working pretty well. If you cannot find the animal for testing, or there is no vaccination records of the animal, then they will give you the vaccine.
Almost all cases of Rabies in the US where someone dies is caused by them not going to the doctor after getting bit. They think it’s no big deal and they don’t go, and then when they are finally brought it’s too late.
Rabies has to be treated before the disease sets in. There is only 1 documented case of someone who actually got rabies and survived in recent times.
Rabies infects the brain, so they need to examine the animal’s brain at the state lab.
You don’t want to go through rabies treatment unless you have to. It sucks. It’s painful and can be expensive.
The factors that go into deciding treatment are: type of exposure (direct or indirect), gravity of exposure (superficial cut or deep cut…) and the animal (vaccinated domesticated animal, non vaccinated domestic animal or wild animal)
The doctors will use all this information to decide on how to handle the case.
If it’s a wild animal such as a bat then it’s presumed and the correct conduct is treating with serum and four doses of vaccine. Im domestic animals, the cat or dog should be observed for 10 days, if in that time it shows signs of rabies or disappears then you treat.
This is how the brazilian gov treats for rabies at least. Other countries might have different guidelines.
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