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Old 07-29-2006, 17:00   #5
medicerik
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: National Capital Region
Posts: 17
I can't find a consensus anywhere on prehospital treatment of snake bites that actually does any good. Most of the techniques that have been taught in various first aid courses (tourniquets, incision and suction, suction extraction kits) have shown to be useless, if not dangerous. Two articles were published in 2004 in Annals of Emergency Medicine (pm me with an email address if you'd like copies of the articles) that looked at the efficacy of the Sawyer snake bit kit. They showed that the kit removed less than two percent of the total venom load injected. The study was modeled off western diamondback envemonation as it suggested that this snake was responsible for the most deaths in the US each year.

In one of the articles, Dr. Bush (snake bite expert from Loma Linda Hospital and star of the TV show Venom ER) suggests that "a cell phone and a helicopter" are the best prehospital treatments for envenomation. He bases this off the fact that when first aid treaments have been studied, they have been ineffective and that there are on average of only 5 snake bite deaths a year in the US. This is from an estimated 8,000 envenomations a year.

The only reccomendations that seem to apply universally are immobilization of the extermity effected and rapid transport to the hospital with support of the ABCs on the way. In the past, I've called poison control (888-222-1222) to help coordinate finding anti-venom and getting it enroute to the hospital that would be receiving the patient if the snake had been positively id'd. Keep in mind, when you call the universal number for poison control from a cell phone, it will be routed to the poison control center nearest to the area code your cell phone is registered in. When I first came to the DC area, my cell phone still had a Boston area code. I learned this the hard way on a run when I called poison control from DC and was routed to the one at Children's Hospital Boston. Miami Dade Fire/Rescue has also set up a phone system specifally designed to help with management of snake bites called Venom One. The phone number for them is 1-786-336-6600. The website is http://www.venomone.com

Hopefully this was of some help,
Erik
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