Talk:Snakebite
Plan for article
I have just come across this Wikipedia import while authoring in Snake venom. The two articles are best maintained as complementary to each other. The introduction of this article concerns me as a physician.
(1) As best as I can tell, snakebite is a condition that is often mishandled by aggressive first aid efforts, many papers in the English language medical literature document worse outcomes for those who have had incisions and suction attempts by well-meaning people in the field, with a higher rate of orthopedic surgery, for example, needed by those who had such attempts, and an overall better outcome for those who have not.
(2) The key issues are very different in places like the United States, where anti-venom is certainly available if the victim is brought rapidly to a hospital, and the poorer and more rural areas of the tropics in the less developed world where such treatment may be impossible to obtain. It is crucial that this article clearly explains the importance of regional variation in the world and it is a disservice to set a tone, as the article has at present, that there is some standard way to handle "snakebite" that the article will convey to the user.
(3) Further, there are many documented cases of extraordinary (and sometimes very harmful) interventions people have foisted on their friends who were "snakebit", presumeably by a "poison snake" only to discover that the bite was from a non-venemous snake or from another animal altogether, also non-venemous, but not a snake. The approach to first aid for snake bite has to make this scenerio very clear.
(4) The World Health Organization has made known that treatment for snake bite by venemous snakes is a major inequity between the developed and undeveloped world. This should be discussed in the article. Clear reccomendations for snake bite in such areas should be given, and they will not be the same as those for a bite in a region where a helicopter is coming very soon. Nancy Sculerati MD 11:52, 30 December 2006 (CST)