Snakes Alive

There are a few indicators that Spring is coming in Victoria – everyone starts talking about the Grand Final, Magpies start swooping (sadly not at the 2011 grand final), the Royal Melbourne Show & Melbourne Cup are on, and snakes warm up and come out to play.

There have already been reports of snake bites in Sunbury and Mildura, as well as a number of snake captures in suburban Melbourne. So it is timely to review the first aid management of snake bite.

• Keep the victim still
• Do not wash the area
• Apply firm compression bandage to whole limb
• Apply splint to limb
• Call Ambulance
• Do not attempt to catch snake and do not take snake to hospital
• Don’t use tourniquets or try to suck the venom out

As with all things, the best first aid is prevention. So don’t go chasing, annoying, trying to capture or kill snakes – this how a lot of people end up getting bitten. Wear long pants and sturdy shoes when walking through long grass and under growth. This way if you are bitten the chances of actually being envenomated are reduced. Consider most rodents don’t wear leather or denim so the snakes fangs are not designed to penetrate them.

If there is any suspicion that a snake bite has occurred, then always err towards assuming it has occurred. The last two snake bites attended by this author both had doubters but were confirmed at hospital as having received a snake bite. The first was a young child in the middle of winter who admitted to annoying a snake but the adults weren’t convinced by his story, and the second was a 12 year old running through long grass in summer and feeling something hit his leg. The snake was never actually seen.

Don’t be fooled if you cannot find fang marks. Often snake bites can appear as a small graze rather than the classic puncture marks expected of 2 fangs. Don’t wash the area in case the hospital want to test for the type of venom. Do not take the snake to the hospital, even dead snakes tend to make the staff very nervous. Doctors and nurses in emergency departments are very good at what they do, but not so good at identifying snake species. In fact the identification of snake species can be very difficult, tiger snakes can appear black, black snakes can appear brown etc etc.

So the main points for snake bite are:

• keep victim still
• apply compression bandage to whole limb and splint
• call ambulance
• remember DRSABCD