INDIAN EXPRESS (New Delhi, India) 09 December 08 Antidote to snakebite: dash to the doc! (Neelam Sharma)
Chandigarh: “Rush to the doctor!” This is the expert advice of PGI doctors, who studied over 22 cases of snakebite in children at the Paediatric Emergency department from January 2006 till June this year.
For the experts, the main cause of concern — apart from the rising instances of snakebites — is the time lapse between the envenomation (process by which venom is injected into the body) and treatment at hospital.
“The response time is very high here. The average time taken to bring a child to the PGI Emergency after he/she was bitten has been found to be 8.5 hours. In fact, one child, who died due to multiple organ failure after being stung by wasps, was brought to hospital after over 24 hours had elapsed,” said Dr K R Jat.
Jat is a co-author of the study titled ‘Profile of Envenomation in Children’ that was presented at the Annual Conference of Asia Pacific Association of Medical Toxicology on Monday.
The median age of the children brought to the Paediatric ICU was eight, with the boy-to-girl ratio at 21:10. The instances of snakebites numbered 19, scorpion stings two and multiple wasp stings in one case.
A majority of the children developed complications later, noted the doctors.
Nearly half developed complications related to snake envenomation, 13.7 per cent developed IV Hemolysis, 13.6 per cent suffered acute renal failure, 9.1 per cent developed aspiration pneumonia and 4.5 per cent suffered acute liver failure. Cardiovascular and neurological complications were common for the children with scorpion envenomation.
Antidote to snakebite: dash to the doc!

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