ORANGE PARK, Fla. – During the spring and summer months, local hospitals will see more cases of people coming in with snake bites.
Although there are venomous snakes in Northeast Florida and Southeast Georgia, their bites would rarely kill someone.
However, there are some things you should never do that could make a snake bite much worse.
Some of the common snakes in our area are cottonmouths, also known as water moccasin snakes.
There are also rattlesnakes, like the pygmy rattler.
Dr. Steven Goodfriend at HCA Florida Orange Park Hospital treats people who have been bitten by some of those creatures.
“There are what we call dry bites where you get bit and there is no envenomation,” said Goodfriend, who is an emergency medicine physician. “Even if it is a venomous snake, it does not always envenomate. There are also snakes that are not venomous.”
Those bites are usually benign and less painful.
“If someone does get bit by a venomous snake and it’s not a dry bite, they’re going to have a lot of pain,” Goodfriend said. “There are a lot of things that can happen, and they obviously need to get to the hospital very, very quickly.”
There are some key things people should never do under any circumstances.
Do not try to pick up the snake.
Do not try to kill it to bring it into the hospital.
“We do see snake bites too, where people are walking, maybe barefoot, and there’s a snake in the bushes, and it bites them, or someone is gardening, and they get bit by a snake,” Goodfriend said. “Historically, what people do is they will try to cut into it, or they will try to suck out the venom. Do not do that. Do not do that. It’s not going to help. It is going to increase the amount of damage to the tissue.”
If someone is bitten and they are not able to identify the type of snake, Goodfriend said there are a couple of things they should do between the snake interaction and getting to a hospital.
“You may want to elevate [the area of the body where the bite occurred] a little bit,” he said. “You want to remove any rings. If you get bitten on the hand with a ring, once it swells, it is going to be hard to get the ring or jewelry off. Warm compress [the wound].”
Do not delay going to a hospital to be checked out.