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American Morning

What to Do if You Get Bitten by Snake

Aired August 01, 2002 - 08:31   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: If you are planning to spend part of the summer in the woods, maybe taking a hike or camping, you might run into something slithery. But if you get bitten, what do you do about it?

Our medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us with the answer, with some cutting-edge protection for your cuts. Just to put this into perspective, I know a lot of people are saying, why are they doing this segment? The fact is 10,000 people are bitten every year.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right.

ZAHN: Not all of them venomous snakes, but they're bitten by snakes.

GUPTA: Right. Not a small number, and equally important, there's been some real myths about how you should take care of snake bites, what you should do.

In fact, we have a movie clip that we're going to show that shows you what you shouldn't do. Let's take a look at that, first.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Oh, my gosh! I was bit by a rattler. Help! A snake, a rattler!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: Certainly we don't learn everything we need to know about movies in the olden days, but certainly we can see here, he's getting very fearful, running around, things like that, things you're not supposed to do, because that's actually going to move the venom around. In the olden days, they believed in tourniquets, they believed in cutting the wound, and they believed in sucking it out.

Now a new article in the "New England Journal of Medicine," looking at snake bites, found those are probably all strongly discouraged. In fact, there are some other things that you should do. We have a list of those here. Remain calm. That's a really important one, because if you remain calm, you're actually going to probably keep the venom more localized to one place. Move away from striking distance. You don't want to let that rattler get you again. Immobilize the injured part of the body, so that the body is immobilized. It's not going to let the blood flow to other parts of the body, most importantly the heart. Remove rings, watches and clothing. People don't thing about that. That place where you got bit is probably going to swell and that ring or that clothing can cause more damage than the bite itself. Get to a medical facility as quickly as possible. There are good anti-venoms out there.

Now you mentioned, 10,000 bites a year. Even of the venomous snakes, only 25 percent of them actually release the venom of at the time of a bite. And of the 120 or so snakes -- I think we have a picture of some of these slithery creatures, as you say, only 20 of them are actually venomous. And so you have a pretty low likelihood. There's only about maybe 10 to 15 deaths a year from snakebites total.

ZAHN: I can't even look at that, doctor. That's gross.

GUPTA: You don't get too many of those here in New York.

ZAHN: Thank God.

Get away from me. Why doesn't it work to cut the bite and suck the venom out, which was what was standard procedure.

GUPTA: First of all, people put a tourniquet on, or wrap a piece of clothing around it. That actually keeps the venomized localized in one place. You don't want to do that. You don't want it to go to your heart, but if you keep it localized in one place, you will probably cause lots of damage to that hand or that foot, whatever got bit. Cutting the wound -- sometimes they may have to cut the wound in the hospital. If you cut it yourself, you expose yourself to infection, and you may make the cut in a way that makes the extremity unusable when then actually have to do an operation in the hospital.

ZAHN: The only thing that doesn't make sense, what you said doctor -- I usually buy all your advice -- is immobilizing the bite. Because if you are hiking and you get bitten, how are you going to immobilize the bite if you have to hike two miles out from where you've gotten bit?

GUPTA: Right. Well, hopefully you 're with somebody. I mean, if you've been bit, you'll probably not going to want to hike out of there. You are probably going to need to get some help, either get someone to carry you out of there or air-flighted out there. I mean, snake bites can be dangerous things, so you certainly need to try to get medical personnel on the scene.

ZAHN: What's with all these band-aids and products you have with you today?

GUPTA: This is pretty exciting stuff. You know, people use 10 band-aids, obviously; 10 billion band-aids a year are sold in this country, 35 band-aids per person. I don't actually use band-aids that much myself, but there are a lot of band-aids out there. And what people have been using in emergency rooms for a long time instead of band-aids is actually this liquid glue, that instead of actually putting a band-aid on, which doesn't completely sometimes cover the wound, you can actually take this and apply it right on to the skin, right over the cut.

This does a few things. First of all, it gives you a completely occlusive covering to the skin. It also provides little bit of antibiotic coverage, so you don't get an infection. And you can reapply this, so it will just sort of fall off on its own. Great for kids. Kids like this stuff.

ZAHN: What about air getting to the wound? That's what you also tell us, doctor, all the time. Wear a band-aid during the day and expose it to the air at night.

GUPTA: This still allows some air to get through it, but what it does do, it also provides an antibiotic covering so that all the dirt and germs and stuff can't also get to it. So unless you are applying band-aids, band-aids that sort of also have a little bit of an undercoating to it, this will work a lot better.

ZAHN: Other than the shapes and sizes, any other variations that are seen here?

GUPTA: The new glue is sort of the good stuff. This was only available in emergency rooms for a long time. Now it's available in pharmacies. There are sorts of different things with antibiotic covering, things that actually stop the bleeding, like for shaving cuts and stuff like that, you can actually put the stuff on it. It will stop the bleeding, in addition to providing a band-aid coverage.

ZAHN: Why don't you ever use band-aids? You're a surgeon. You're in the operating room. Don't you prick yourself with stuff?

GUPTA: I just take good care of my hands.

ZAHN: Paper cuts I have all the time.

Thanks, doctor. Appreciate the House Call this morning.

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