Dog attacks

Question

The number of people who were admitted/needed hospital treatment for dog attacks, the types of wounds, requirement for cosmetic/reconstructive surgery across several ages groups within NHS Scotland, between the period 2006-2016.

Response

Please see the attached documents detailing the information requested.

Acute Inpatient and Day Cases:

The first release relates to Acute Inpatient and Daycases, information on Acute Inpatient and Daycases is sourced from the SMR01 dataset.

Please note that it was not possible to restrict the identification of wound site to only the face, therefore, we have reported on all cases of wounds to the head.  Additionally, it should be noted that there is no definitive list of codes which identify cosmetic and reconstructive surgery. Hence, after identifying the cases where coding has identified that a dog attack took place, clinical advice was then sought to identify the OPCS4 Procedure codes within the data, which could be classified as 'cosmetic/reconstructive'.  A full list of these codes can be found in the attached document.  Procedure figures have only been provided where the surgery took place within the same episode.

Please see the notes within the attached document , and any caveats which surround it.

Accident and Emergency Attendances:

Within the Accident and Emergency data mart the facility exists to record attendances at A&E due to dog attacks and the bodily location of the injury incurred. However, the fields which can be used to identify dog attacks are optional for completion by NHS Boards and the level of recording is not sufficient for accurate national reporting of attendances.

Attendances at A&E due to dog attacks can be recorded in several ways, either as a diagnosis or through the data field 'Objects/substances involved in producing injury'.  There is no nationally agreed coding system to allocate diagnostic codes to A&E attendances in Scotland.  Some A&E departments use the World Health Organisation's International Classification of Diseases 10th Revision (ICD-10), others use local diagnostic coding.  ICD-10 does allow the capture of attendances related to dog attacks.  The data field 'Objects/substances involved in producing injury' has low completion being used by only two NHS Boards.  The relevant code to specifically identify dog involvement has not been recorded against any A&E attendances.  In addition, less than 01.% of A&E attendances have information recorded on bodily location of injury and none of these are recorded for attendances where dog attacks are implicated.