Factors Effecting Prognosis in Snake Bite Victims

Aim: We aimed to determine factors influencing the hospitalisation durations and discharge status of snakebite patients, starting from prehospital care in the field.
Materials and Methods: Thirty-eight consecutive snakebite patients who were admitted to the Emergency Medicine Department between 1 May 2013 and 31 August 2016 were enrolled in the study. The data were evaluated using SPSS 17.0.
Results: Thirty-eight patients were enrolled, of which, 17 (44.7%) were females. Of the 38 patients enrolled, nine patients were in stage 1, 24 were in stage 2 and 5 were in stage 3. The mean antivenoms given to the patients were 3.33 ± 1.29 vials in stage 2 and 4.40 ± 1.14 vials in stage 3. The mean time from bite to antivenom infusion was 80.92 ± 47.57 minutes. The hospitalisation durations of the patients who had shorter bite-to-antivenom infusion intervals (bite-to-needle) were also shorter (p<0.001). In addition, overweight patients were found to stay longer in the hospital (p=0.027). Patients with low haemoglobin and platelet counts and high creatine kinase (CK) levels were found to stay longer in the hospital (p<0.05).
Conclusion: The shorter hospitalisation durations of the patients with shorter bite-to-needle times show the importance of early administration of antivenom. The longer hospitalisation durations of the overweight patients seem to reflect their slow wound-healing times, which may be due to co-morbidities. Low platelets, low haemoglobin(Hb) and high Creatinine Kinase (CK) are found to be poor prognostic markers in snakebite patients.