Health security

Personality Affects Your Chances of Being Attacked by a Dog

Dog bites are a problem. According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, 4.5 million Americans are bitten by dogs each year, and every day, nearly 1,000 individuals show up in hospital emergency rooms because of dog attacks. The annual cost of medical treatments for dog bites (including 27,000 reconstructive surgeries) is over $250,000,000, and insurance companies fork out $530 million dollars a year in dog bite claims. Then there are the 26 Americans who were killed by dogs last year.

How Many Dog Bites?

But how many people are really bitten by dogs and who is most likely to be bitten by a dog? Researchers at the University of Liverpool realized that, like Bill, a lot of dog bite victims do not actually see a doctor. They figured that the best way to estimate rates of dog bites would be to ask everyone in a community if they had ever been bitten by a dog. Their results have just been published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, and there are some surprises. (You can read the full text of their article here.)