A recent case of seal finger which was misdiagnosed and hence mistreated at the patient's first presentation is described. The patient was eventually referred to a hand specialist and after the correct treatment with tetracycline, responded well without any long-term sequelae. Seal finger is an occupational injury that occurs to those who work directly or indirectly with seals. The disease entity has been described in both Scandinavian and Canadian literature. The causative microorganism was unknown until 1991, when Mycoplasma phocacerebrale was isolated from both the finger of a patient with seal finger and from the mouth of a seal that bit the patient. Although rare, the disease is not uncommon in marine workers, biologists and veterinarians. Prompt identification based on patient history and treatment with oral tetracycline is pendant to a favourable patient outcome.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 265. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 20 October 2026.
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#174,095
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Outputs from Plastic Surgery
#1
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Outputs of similar age
#466
of 240,971 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Plastic Surgery
#1
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Altmetric has tracked 34,614,958 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 304 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 6.3. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 240,971 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 7 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has scored higher than all of them
