in specific environments where you might encounter snakes, especially poisonous snakes, we want to cover the treatment, and how to actually handle a person when they get bit by a snake. when a person gets bit by a snake, and it is poisonous,
first aid kit snake bite, we're going to activate emergency medical services, and expedite getting the person to emergency advance care as fast as possible. we're going to reduce the amount of motion of the limb that was bit, and we're going to try to make sure that we do not
have the person be active thereby circulating the toxins around anymore than need be. the treatment of that snake bite is now pretty much limited to two specific maneuvers. if you have advanced care or basic life support with a blood pressure cuff. we're going to go ahead and put theblood pressure cuff over the snake bite area, you could put gauze over it first to keep the site clean, the puncture site clean. then the blood pressure cuff. and if it's the upper extremity we're going to increase the pressure of the blood pressure cuff to between forty and seventy millimeters of mercury of pressure. if it's in a lower extremity they're recommending inflating the cuff to fifty-five to seventy millimeters of mercury.
why? i don't know. but that is the recommendations of how to treat the actual puncture wounds in the injection site. now, i say "why, i don't know." i'm not sure why it's that many millimeters of mercury differentiating between the upper extremities, from the lower extremities. but let me just explain why we do that. we're putting pressure around the bite and injection site, to keep the toxins out of the lymph nodes as long as possible. so that's the reason we're doing it.
i can only imagine you're going to ask me, "why is it going to be that many millimeters of mercury over, for the pressure?" and i don't know. i don't understand it either. but that's the guideline that we're going to follow. now, let's say that you don't have a blood pressure cuff. ace bandage type wraps. you're going to bandage it very similar to what we would do when we're wrapping a wound. and you're just going to put moderate pressure, not enough to actually cut off circulation, but you're going to put a firm amount.
and again, it's to put pressure around the injection site to keep the injected poisons and neurotoxins from infecting the lymphs and infecting the lymph system. and then, checking the extremities to make sure that there's good circulation, so you're not actually losing limbs, or cutting off circulation like a tourniquet effect. and then we're gonna expedite getting this person to medical emergency help. now, a couple things not to do. we're not doing the cup and suction anymore. and i know some people are going to disagree with me. they still sell the snake bite kits that have the suction cups.
there's not enough science for us to actually promote it. i'm not saying it doesn't help completely, but i'm not going to say that it's encouraged by the consensus standards. so if you're thinking about, "what should i do?" save your money. there isn't anything that indicates that that's going to benefit you at this point. we're also not gonna cut and suction with our mouths either. not only is this a bloodborne pathogens issue if you're a responder, but there's again, little or no scientific studies proving that this is a good method for getting the poison out of the wound. the other thing that we want to make sure you understand is that we're not putting cold packs around it anymore.
again, it's probably not going to help enough to do, and if we apply the ice without the proper wraps or bandages in between, we run the risk of frostbite. that's the same thing that applies to bruises and swelling from brakes, fractures, injuries and things like that, too. but it's not indicated to use ice. so snake bites, we want to get them to the emergency care as fast as possible to administer anti-venom serum, to get this person on the road to healing. one of the worst things that happens is obviously the necrosis that occurs, and if it's neurotoxin, obviously it can cause paralysis and death in a fairly short amount of time. so we want to get these people to advanced care as fast as possible with as little movement as possible.
quickly, let's jump now, from there to jelly fish. jelly fish, obviously, are gonna be more when you're around oceans that are known to have that problem. but it warrants explaining what to do if you get stung by jelly fish. the pain is immense. one way that we can actually neutralize the poison from the jelly fish, is actually with vinegar. vinegar poured over the sting area for at least thirty seconds. then treatment of the injury for pain management is now supposed to be hot water submersion. hot, not boiling, not scalding.
keep that in mind. we're not talking about scalding hot water. we're just talking about bath temp hot water. and at that temperature, the water helps to relieve some of the discomfort that comes from jelly fish stings. but the actual neutralizing chemical that we're using to help reverse the toxicity and the injury from the sting poison itself is that we're going to be pouring vinegar over the sting area for at least thirty seconds.
get them to the emergency room. get help on the way in case they have an allergic or anaphyactic reaction to the stings and the poisons, but keep in mind, the treatment is still gonna be the same.
recognition, neutralization, and then get them to the advanced medical care as fast as possible.
