Thursday, April 4, 2013

A 'big' snake bite . . .

Yesterday, we had a lady being wheeled into casualty. She had been bitten by a viper about 12 hours back. She had a swollen leg and couple of bite marks. However, she was very cold. And we could not get a pulse on her. She was in shock. 

One of the relatives told me that she was bitten by a baby python. They had brought the snake!

I was sure that there was envenomation. She had difficulty breathing although her saturation was normal. 

I got 2 vials of ASV going into her along with the intravenous fluids and decided to take a look at the snake which was kept outside. 

Thankfully, it was a killed specimen. And what did I find . . . 




Yeah, a really big viper . . . 

So much for people misidentifying snakes . . .

Surprisingly, her clotting time was normal. However, the urine output was on the lesser side. The creatinine was 1.57 mg%. I gave her Anti Snake Venom according to the low dose protocol. 

It's 36 hours now. She's done well so far. The urine output is on the rise. Tomorrow, we shall repeat the S. creatinine. And if that is fine, she should be going home. 

4 comments:

  1. my god.. very scary.... and u people live there believing in God's supernatural protection..psalms 91 came to my mind when I thought so

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  2. Yes, Kuruvilla , it is a classical case of Dry bite , I think.

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  3. How do you explain the shock and the decreased urine output? The S.creatinine was 0.9 today. There was also very bad swelling of the site of bite which is now much better.

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