How to Prevent and Treat Snake Bites Snake bites can be deadly. It's important to react quickly to bites.

If emergency medical services can be reached, request help through 911. If in a remote area, getting the victim to medical care is vital. Antivenin is available, but it must be used as early as possible. Here's How: Safety first! Get away from the snake. That's probably why it bit in the first place. Follow universal precautions and wear personal protective equipment if you have it. Call 911 immediately! Waiting until the pain may lead to permanent tissue damage. Remember that calling 911 on a cell phone is different than a regular phone. Do not elevate. Keep the bite below the level of the heart. Wash the area with warm water and soap. Remove constricting clothing and jewelry from the extremity. The area may swell and constricting items will cause tissue death. If the snake is an elapid species (coral snakes and cobras), wrap the extremity with an elastic pressure bandage. Start from the point closest to the heart and wrap towards the fingers or toes. Continue to keep the bite lower than the heart. Tips: 1. NO CUTTING & SUCKING! Those snake bite kits from the drug store don't work. Cutting into the wound will just create infections. 2. An ounce of prevention is worth a ton of first aid: o Wear long pants and boots taller than the ankle. o Make plenty of noise and vibration while walking. o Do not approach snakes, avoid them. o Do not expect rattlesnakes to make any noises. 3. In today's digital world, pictures are easy to get. A quick picture of the snake - even with a cell phone - will help medical crews identify the animal. Rattlesnakes are pit vipers, identified by dents in the side of their heads that look like ears. Coral snakes are small with bands of red bordered by pale yellow or white. Cobras have hoods that spread behind their heads. 4. It's not that important to identify the snake; medical crews in areas prone to snake bites can often identify the animal just from the wound. Pit vipers have two fangs and the bite often has two small holes. Reaction: This article is all about How to prevent and treat snake bites; this article is very helpful to us as a nursing student because we can use it in emergency situation for example activity like camping in the forest and one of your classmate has bitten by a cobra snake, at least you know what is your first intervention in this kind of situation. This article also is helpful to the people who are working in the Zoo, they know what to do in case they are bitten by a snake, and also they know how to prevent to be bitten by a snake. Lastly, this article is important to all individuals because in this kind of emergency situation some of them know what to do first and some are not so, the purpose of this article is that to let the people to be inform and properly guided with information about how to prevent to be bitten by a snake and what are the proper intervention in this emergent situation

Reference: By Rod Brouhard, About.com Guide

Updated August 11, 2009

\\\\\\\Emergency is a situation that poses an immediate risk to health, life, property or environment. Most emergencies require urgent intervention to prevent a worsening of the situation, although in some situations, mitigation may not be possible and agencies may only be able to offer palliative care for the aftermath. Emergency Nursing is a nursing specialty in which nurses care for patients in the emergency or critical phase of their illness or injury. Disaster is a natural or man-made hazard that has come to fruition], resulting in an event of substantial extent causing significant physical damage or destruction, loss of life, or drastic change to the environment. A disaster can be ostensively defined as any tragic event with great loss stemming from events such as earthquakes, floods, catastrophic accidents, fires, or explosions. Triage is the process of determining the priority of patients' treatments based on the severity of their condition. This rations patient treatment efficiently when resources are insufficient for all to be treated immediately. The term comes from the French verb trier, meaning to separate, sift or select. Emergent: Immediate (unstable and requiring attentionwithin 15 minutes) Urgent (temporarily stable butrequiring care within a few hours), Cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, is an emergency procedure performed on people suffering cardiac arrest. The purpose of CPR is to provide a continuous flow of oxygen to the

lungs and brain until the person regains consciousness. The human brain can only survive an average of five minutes without oxygen, after which time permanent damage is done. By performing CPR on a victim, the rescuer is upping the chances for a full recovery. Casualty any person who is lost to his organization by reason of having been declared dead, wounded, diseased, detained, captured or missing.

Shock is a life-threatening condition that occurs when the body is not getting enough blood flow. This can damage multiple organs. Shock requires IMMEDIATE medical treatment and can get worse very rapidly. Catastrophe sudden disaster of immense proportions that has severe consequences, often accompanied by destruction of assets and/or loss of life. Poisoning is caused by swallowing, injecting, breathing in, or otherwise being exposed to a harmful substance. Most poisonings occur by accident. Antidote is a substance which can counteract a form of poisoning. The term ultimately derives from the Greek antididonai, "given against". Corrosive substance that causes visible discoloration, destruction, or irreversible changes, in living tissue at the point of contact within four hours. For the same effect on inanimate material, the term 'corroding' may instead be used. Septic shock is a medical emergency caused by decreased tissue perfusion and oxygen delivery as a result of severe infection and sepsis, though the microbe may be systemic or localized to a particular site. Acute Biologic Crisis a severe decisive or critical period in an individuals life that could be a life- threatening situation. Hypovolemia (also hypovolaemia) is a state of decreased blood volume; more specifically, decrease in volume of blood plasma. It is thus the intravascular component of volume contraction (or loss of blood volume due to things such as hemorrhaging or dehydration), but, as it also is the most essential one, hypovolemia and volume contraction are sometimes used synonymously. Neurogenic shock is a distributive type of shock resulting in hypotension, occasionally with bradycardia, that is attributed to the disruption of the autonomic pathways within the spinal cord. Hypotension occurs due to decreased systemic vascular resistance resulting in pooling of blood within the extremities lacking sympathetic tone. Bradycardia results from unopposed vagal activity and has been found to be exacerbated by hypoxia and endobronchial suction. Anaphylactic shock is anaphylaxis associated with systemic vasodilation that results in low blood pressure. It is also associated with severe bronchoconstriction to the point where the individual is unable to breathe. Asphyxia or asphyxiation (from Greek - "without" and sphyxis, "heartbeat") is a condition of severely deficient supply of oxygen to the body that arises from being unable to breathe normally. An example of asphyxia is choking. Coma (from the Greek koma, meaning deep sleep) is a state of unconsciousness, lasting more than 6 hours in which a person cannot be awakened, fails to respond normally to painful stimuli, light or sound, lacks a normal sleep-wake cycle and does not initiate voluntary actions. A person in a state of coma is described as comatose. According to the Glasgow Coma Scale though, a person with confusion is considered to be in the mildest coma.