FIGHT BITE

Introduction – Agents

The most notorious of all nonvenomous bite wounds is the fight bite. As the name implies, this injury occurs when the subject punches an adversary in the teeth, lacerating the dorsum of one or more metacarpal-phalangeal (MCP) joints (Figure 22.1). Other names for this injury, such as “morsus humanus” or “clenched fist injury,” have been proposed, though “fight bite” is more descriptive and widely used. The fight bite gave human bites their reputation for being more prone to infection than other animal bites. This has more to do with the location of the bite and the typical delay in treatment than with the mix of organisms in the human mouth. Common fight bite infections include cellulitis, subcutaneous abscesses, septic MCP joint, and purulent tenosynovitis. In the preantibiotic era, fight bite infections commonly necessitated finger and occasionally arm amputations. Fight bite infections are usually polymicrobial and often involve Streptococcus species, Staphylococcus species, Eikenella, and oral anaerobic bacteria.

The first two fight-bite patients reported in the medical literature were described by William H. Peters in 1911. He was primarily concerned with culturing mouth organisms, specifically Fusobacteria, from the infected wounds. Various other studies emphasizing the symbiosis of spirochetes and fusiform organisms in fight bites appeared afterwards.