New Zealand's injury rate from serious dog attacks has soared since the 1990s, and doctors who are treating the victims are calling for action.

A new study in today's NZ Medical Journal has found that 4958 people were admitted to NZ hospitals because of dog bites between 2004 and 2014.

The hospitalisation rate has jumped from 8.3 a year for every 100,000 people in the last study in the 1990s to an average of 11.3 a year over the latest 10-year period, and above 12 a year in both the latest two years in the study period.

Children under 10 are the most at risk, with many of the cases presented to emergency rooms involving wounds to the neck and head

Middlemore Hospital plastic surgeon Dr Zac Moaveni, who led the study, ​told Mike Hosking over that same period, there were 99,000 ACC registered injuries.

"The serious end, that requires hospitalisations, is just 5 per cent of the entire recorded dog bite injuries.

The study says the highest hospitalisation rates from dog bite injuries were for children aged under 5 (22.7 a year for every 100,000 children), children aged 5 to 9 (18.5), people in the poorest tenth of NZ communities (22.6) and Māori (21.3).

"We found the most at risk members of the population were children under 10, Māori and people from lower socio-economic areas," Moaveni said.

A Bay of Plenty grandfather whose farm dog mauled his 6-year-old grandson in 2015, Graham Hartley, 79, said he was always wary of dogs now.

"I would never underestimate a dog, they are bred to kill," he said.

"I had a big crew - six working dogs, and game dogs. I had them all my life, and when I went to hospital I said to my young fellow: 'I don't want a dog on the place.'"

The new study comes after the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) paid out more than $4 million in 2016 alone in dog-bite related injuries. That same year, ACC processed 13,801 dog bite claims.

Graphic / NZHerald

The study found that New Zealand's rate of hospitalisation with dog bite injuries was higher than other studies have found in the US, UK and Australia.

It found that children were more likely to be bitten around the head and neck, whereas adults were more likely to be bitten on the upper limbs.