A Case of Tiger Bite Injury with Unilateral Internal Jugular Vein Reconsruction

Abstract

We reported a very rare case of tiger bite injury. The patient was a 57-year-old male who was a keeper at Asahiyama zoological park in Asahikawa city. He was attacked by an Amur tiger which seriously injured upper half of his body, including intracranial trauma. We performed an operation to save his life. There was severe bleeding from the cervical wound because the left internal jugular vein was severed, therefore, it was clamped and occluded with ligatures. We treated his many wounds, but the intracranial bleeding was not relieved. We considered that ascending intracranial pressure by occlusion of the left internal jugular vein caused the bleeding. Left internal jugular vein reconstruction was performed by neurosurgeons. They used an artificial graft initillay, and then used the greater saphenous vein as a graft. We considered the patient's left internal vein as the dominant side.