Do seek medical help immediately as the venom can cause severe damage to health and even death within a few hours.
Ideally, you'll reach medical help within 30 minutes of being bitten. If the bite is left untreated, your bodily functions will break down over a period of 2 or 3 days and the bite may result in severe organ damage or death.
Take long, deep breaths to help calm yourself down. Remember that the odds are in your favour: it's rare for people to die after being bitten by a snake, especially if they follow first aid steps.
In this case, the victim usually dies within 30 minutes. The only way to save the life of a victim of a cobra bite is to inject the appropriate antivenom shortly after the patient has been bitten or put him on an artificial respirator.
Once bitten, the venom takes only seconds to travel from the rattlesnake's retractable fangs, through your skin, and into your bloodstream. You'll begin to see symptoms immediately, but your symptoms will worsen over time. Ideally, you'll reach medical help within 30 minutes of being bitten.
Ultimately you are going to need antivenom because antivenom is the only definitive treatment for a snake envenomation, but the tips below are designed to help you get to the hospital alive and leave the hospital in one piece.
Blisters, often filled with blood, may form in the bite area. Without treatment, tissue around the bite may be destroyed. Other symptoms include fever, chills, general weakness, faintness, sweating, anxiety, confusion, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Some of these symptoms may be caused by terror rather than venom.
Sea snake venom is extremely stable. Research has shown that boiling for 30 minutes and dissolving venom in both acidic and basic solutions to a pH range of 1 to 11, respectively, did not significantly change LD50 levels after administration in rats.
In addition to calling for help and immobilizing the bitten area, you should remove any restricting items, such as rings or bracelets, and wash the area with soap and water. You should not apply ice to a snake bite, attempt to cut and suck out the bitten area or apply a tourniquet, Dr. Sharman said.
Twenty minutes after being bitten you may be lose the ability to talk. After one hour you're probably comatose, and by six hours, without an antidote, you are dead. A person will experience "pain, paralysis and then death within six hours," says Damaris Rotich, the curator for the snake park in Nairobi.
The black mamba, for example, injects up to 12 times the lethal dose for humans in each bite and may bite as many as 12 times in a single attack. This mamba has the fastest-acting venom of any snake, but humans are much larger than its usual prey so it still takes 20 minutes for you to die.
A bite from a venomous snake can cause tissue death (necrosis) swelling, bleeding and destruction of blood cells (hematological problems), and nerve (neurological) damage (coma, paralysis).
Do not allow the victim to eat or to drink water in order to keep metabolism at low rate. No water No food is the golden rule. DO NOT COVER THE BITE AREA AND PUNCTURE MARKS. The wound should be gently cleaned with antiseptic.
"In our considered opinion when a snake bites a person, it is an accident.
At the hospital, treatment will depend on the type of snake. If the snake was venomous, the person will be given anti-venom treatment. A tetanus shot may be given, depending on the date of the last injection.
But while there are only a couple of deaths each year, it's estimated there are about 3,000 snakebites in Australia annually.
Recent studies have found that Mucuna pruriens leaves are more effective than the standard drug, anti-venin, for curing snakebite.
This separation may be effected by means of heat. If any sample of venom be thrown into watery solution and heated at 85° C. for a period of fifteen minutes, the albumin contained in the solution is coagulated and the phlogogenic substances are destroyed, whilst the toxicity of the substance is entirely unaffected.
Snake venom contains several neurotoxic, cardiotoxic, cytotoxic, nerve growth factor, lectins, disintrigrins, haemorrhagins and many other different enzymes. These proteins not only inflict death to animals and humans, but can also be used for the treatment of thrombosis, arthritis, cancer and many other diseases.
It can trigger lots of tiny blood clots and then when the venom punches holes in blood vessels causing them to leak, there is nothing left to stem the flow and the patient bleeds to death. Other venoms can increase blood pressure, decrease blood pressure, prevent bleeding or create it.
Blood that fails to clot after 20-minutes is considered positive and indicative of coagulopathy and thus systemic envenoming, whilst blood that has clotted is considered negative and not indicative of coagulopathy.
The body's immune responses to snake venom may contribute to the severity of these symptoms but have not been well characterized in humans. Treatment with antivenom is potentially lifesaving, but also carries risk, as severe allergic reactions (anaphylaxis) are common.
“It is important to note that this resistance is not absolute – we are not immune to cobra venom, just much less likely to die than other primates.” Resistance to cobra venom has a cost – receptors that are resistant to cobra venom don't work quite as well.