The Kinkajou

The Kinkajou

In my work as a physician, I often get situations that are new to me and I have to figure out how best to handle them. Here is one such story. It was a regular day on the Infectious Disease consult service. We had several people on our team as these days we often have students and medical residents attached to us as part of their clinical rotations.

On this day, we got a call about a patient who had been bitten by an animal on her hand. Her hand was swollen and not responding to antibiotics as expected. Infectious Disease input was requested to help manage this patient, and the case was assigned to one of our students. The student typically gets the detailed history then presents this during rounds.

At our rounds later that day, our student presented the case. The patient was a lady in her forties. She worked at a gas station and had noticed one of the people filling up there had an extremely cute furry animal on his shoulder. She thought that this was a very cute pet and went up to the owner and asked him about it. He said it was his pet Kinkajou.

A ‘kinka’ what I asked? I had never heard of this kind of animal before. Our student was a very bright young lady and had already done her research on it. “It is an exotic pet from South America, and is related to the Raccoon family” she said.

Our patient had tried to ‘pet’ the kinkajou, which apparently, the kinkajou did not like and it bit her on her right hand. Startled, she ran back into the gas station and put her hand in running water. When she came out, the kinkajou and its owner were nowhere to be found. Her hand became swollen and painful, and she went to the Emergency Room. She was started on antibiotics and discharged home.

Her hand did not get better and over the next three days, became even more swollen. She went back to the Emergency Room and was admitted this time and started on strong antibiotics. Unfortunately, the hand was still not getting better and the next day, the Infectious Disease team was called.

On examining her, her hand was quite swollen, with small teeth marks at the base of her thumb. We did a scan of the hand, and this just showed the swelling, but no obvious abscess or fluid collection. At that time, I was not sure what to do next. As in most unusual cases, we subsequently did a search on the literature about kinkajou bites.

The first article that came up was about the famous socialite Paris Hilton who was bitten by her pet kinkajou. Since the kinkajou is related to the raccoon family, a concern of possible rabies is present. One can euthanize the animal and examine the brain for rabies. Paris Hilton refused this and apparently both she and her kinkajou did well.

Based on our research, we decided to treat our patient like she had a wild raccoon bite. We gave her broader antibiotic coverage and also immunized her against rabies as an added precaution.

Our patient did well, and the swelling in her hand came down. Three days after admission, her hand was almost back to normal and she was discharged home on oral antibiotics and instructions to complete her series of rabies vaccination. At her discharge, she told me that she would not be attempting to ‘pet’ strange animals in the future, no matter how cute.

I am glad she did well, and now, I know what a kinkajou is. If Paris Hilton ever gets bitten by her pet again, I am ready to treat her!

A Kinkajou