Hazardous marine life: Stingray injury and its multimodal management

Abstract

Human existence is known for its phenomenon of expansion and extension in the various natural habitat over a period of time. This has always accompanied with more frequent encounter with the natural inhabitants of that territory. Marine environment is not an exception to this. With increasing encroachment in the marine life, the incidences of the injuries due to marine animals have increased by manifold. Herein we report a case of stingray injury to a diver, its presentation and management. Stingray injuries are one of the rare forms of marine injuries as the fish attacks on provocation or accidentally only. The stingray injury causes both local and systemic effects on humans however in our case the local effects were late. Moreover the local damage was much more as compared to the external appearance of the stinger injury. This is an important aspect of the clinical part of this report as the external appearance of the injury is very deceptive in comparison with the actual damage caused within. He was managed with IV antibiotics, supportive care, timely local wound debridement and hyperbaric oxygen therapy. The response to HBOT was superb and resulted in speedy recovery of the patient. It can be concluded that though the stingray injuries are rare but the disabilities caused by extensive venomous damage to soft tissue and time taken for complete recovery. Systemic effects though not seen in our case may cause sudden death as reported in some case reports.