Snake Bite Treatment, Snake Bite First Aid

The best advice in snake bite treatment is to assume that every snake is poisonous and seek medical attention for all.

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.

Avoiding 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.

Snake Bite First Aid:

• 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 when you reach hospital.
• Suck and spit from the spot of the snake bite. Commercial kits include a suction device as sucking by mouth has low effectiveness with only about 5% of the venom removed.
• Wash out the area with soap and water.
• Splint the area, send a friend for help, 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 and walk calmly, don't run. Snakes punch their venom into your muscle. The harder you move around the harder your muscles contract and the faster the venom spreads to the rest of your body.

Snake Bite First Aid - 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

 

Print	Home
Search Site Doctor Secrets!