Rattlesnake Antivenin

Specialties Emergency

Published

The Antivenin for rattlesnake bites is so hard to mix. It drives me nuts. I have tried warming the diluent first and it doesn't seem to help much. The patient needs it now, not in 1/2 hour.

Thanks!

Sheez

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We are lucky enough to have a hospitalist on staff who is also a rattlesnake expert so we have a little experience with the stuff here! What we do when we have a snakebite, is gather all the crofab we need for the first round and start grabbing all available persons to start mixing. We recruit the volunteers and students and any tech that is free for a moment and just start "rolling" away! It doesn't reduce the time per vial, but it certainly gets the first round going much quicker!

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Specializes in EMS, ED, Trauma, CEN, CPEN, TCRN.

I had a copperhead bite patient last summer, and we did exactly what kaitee said -- I grabbed the EMS folks that brought the guy in, and we all stood there for a few minutes rolling the CroFab. The important thing is to NOT shake the vials!

P.S. Original post is from 1999 ... wow, a decade later and nothing has changed! LOL. CroFab still takes time to mix. :D

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why is katieb going around replying to 10 year old threads? this is the second one i've been in in the last 2 minutes

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