How to Treat Snake Bite

The simplest advice on how to treat a snake bite is to assume that every snake is poisonous until proven otherwise. So seek medical attention for every snake bite. Snake bites are a territorial protection instinct. If a snake feels threatened it will strike. Many people are bitten trying to catch or get a closer look at a snake.

Avoid Snake Bites

• If you see a snake, stay at least one snake length away i.e. out of the strike zone.
• Stay on hiking paths and away from tall grasses. Wear boots and thick denim pants. Sleep in cleared areas. Wear gloves when collecting firewood or stones.

How to Treat Snake Bite

• Take a good look at the snake. Remember what color(s) and bands the snake has. Tell this to your doctor to help them identify whether it was a poisonous snake or not.
• Commercial kits include a suction device. Don't suck on the wound with your mouth as this has low effectiveness with only about 5% of the venom removed and risks damaging your mouth and throat. You'll see this being done in old Westerns and jungle movies. Don't.
• Wash out the snake bite with soap and water.
• Send a friend for help, splint the limb and sit calmly with the affected limb dangling below your heart level. If you're alone, use your belt or a strip of fabric to tourniquet the limb loosely and walk calmly, don't run. Snakes punch their venom into your muscle. The harder you move, the harder your muscles squeeze the venom into your blood stream where it spreads quickly to the rest of your body!

How to Treat a Snake Bite - Do Not!

• Make your tourniquet too tight! Your index finger should be able to just slip under it. Your aim is to reduce back flow of blood through your veins with a moderate squeeze. If the tourniquet is too tight it will stop your limb's forward pulse too, suffocating it.
• Put ice on the wound.
• Cut the bite hoping to get the poison out. This does more harm than good.

Snake Bite Symptoms

• Numbness or tingling in the lips and mouth.
• Dizziness.
• Shortness of breath.
• Redness, purple or black discoloration spreading beyond the margins of the bite.
• Foul odor or pus coming the snake bite site.

At the hospital, if it's a non-poisonous snake your doctor will clean up the wound and ask you to apply or take an antibiotic for a week to avoid infection. Poisonous bites will need antivenin and other sophisticated in hospital supportive snake bite treatment measures.

Snakebite entry

 

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