Sir, animal bites are usually caused by wild and domestic animals such as lions, bears, dogs, cats, but rarely by camels.1 The mechanism of camel bite injuries are complex and include penetrating and crushing injuries by the camel jaw and blunt injuries when victims are picked up, lifted and thrown by the camel, resulting in fractures and severe lacerations of skin, muscle, tendons and nerves.

Camel bite injuries vary from avulsion of scalp, skull fractures, brain injuries, traumatic tracheostomy, common carotid artery injury, fracture ramus,2 orbital fracture dislocation of the temporomandibular joint, and gas gangrene to fractures with or without neurovascular involvement.3 All soft tissue wounds and fractures should be regarded as contaminated, so all patients should be given tetanus vaccine and broad-spectrum antibiotic coverage.4 During closure if there are underlying bone fractures, many authors believe that they should be treated by primary closure following reduction and fixation of the underlying bone.

We report a case of a 29-year-old male patient who was bitten by a camel when giving it an injection for scabies. He bled profusely after the bite, receiving first aid care and vaccination at a nearby hospital. On examination the patient was fully conscious, all vitals were stable and there was a 5 cm lacerated wound on the right side of his face (Fig. 1). There was bleeding from the right ear and three separate wounds in the scalp on the left side representing the size of camel teeth. His mouth opening was slightly restricted because of pain, deviation of the mandible on the right side, with weakness of the marginal mandibular and buccal branch of the facial nerve.

Figure 1
figure 1

Laceration (sutured) wound on the right side of the face caused by camel bite

Full size image

Intraorally the patient had disturbed occlusion with premature molar contact on the right side. A CT scan of the facial bones revealed a fracture of the right subcondyle. The fracture site was exposed, reduced and fixed using two, four-holed titanium mini plates of 2 mm diameter. The patient received antibiotics and analgesics postoperatively, and regular follow-up for five years was satisfactory. We consider this to be a rare case because of the uncommon mechanism of injury with compression of the right side of the mandible and left side of skull vault between the two big jaws of the camel without causing injury to the external pinna. As the condyle is the weak point in the mandible it was easily fractured preventing transmission of forces to the cranium.