The three most common types of bites are dog, cat and human.
Surprisingly, doctors say a dog bite is the least dangerous.
"Dog bites are usually the least worrisome," says Dr. Neal Aulick, EMSTAR Medical Director at OVMC in Wheeling. "We usually don't have to put dog bite patients on antibiotics. They usually do pretty well."
On the other hand, human bites are considered far more dangerous.
"The mouth's pretty dirty," notes Dr. Aulick. "It has a lot of flora in it."
In fact, health professionals say the human mouth contains 100 million organisms per milliliter.
Some scary things can be transmitted by the human bite--herpes, syphillis, tuberculosis, tetanus and possibly even HIV.
But mostly, human bites just get infected, about 50% of the time.
"Human bite" is a loose term that means any time that human teeth break someone's skin.
An example is when a person punches someone in the mouth and the victim's teeth perforate the attacker's knuckles.
"If these are left untreated, they can lead to serious deep tissue infections of the hand and can even end up with loss of the limb," he said.
If the biter has bad teeth, diseased gums or even just cavities, all the more chance of infection.
Human bites used to be mostly limited to tussles between toddlers and bar fights between drunks.
"Two years ago, we actually had a case when someone got their nose bitten off," he said. "That was due to alcohol."
But now with designer drugs such as bath salts, there's more biting going on.
"These patients, you know it," says Dr. Aulick. "Where alcoholics can sometimes get aggressive and people on marijuana are usually pretty mellow, these designer drugs are different. They're stimulants. People will act out when they're on these kinds of drugs."
Doctors advise everyone to stay away from designer drugs.
And if you are bitten, wash the wound thoroughly and go to the doctor.
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