ENSEN BEACH — A Jensen Beach woman was resting at home Friday after being bitten last week by a highly venomous coral snake while weeding under a bougainvillea bush in her front yard.
Patricia Facchini survived the potentially fatal bite after receiving several doses of antivenin serum and spending a night in the intensive care unit of Martin Memorial Medical Center in Stuart. But Facchini said she was shocked to learn the medicine that helped her combat the snake's paralyzing poison was part of a dwindling supply.
"I'm concerned that they're not going to make the serum anymore," Facchini said.
Officials at Martin Memorial and Tampa General Hospital said coral snake antivenin is no longer being manufactured and doctors are working with remaining inventories expected to be gone in a couple years.
"It kind of worries me," said Emil Varelli, Martin Memorial's director of pharmacy. "I'm wondering if there is going to be a new product available."
He reported two coral snake bites have been treated at Martin Memorial in the past few weeks, but had no information on the other case.
Dr. Cynthia Lewis-Younger, managing director for the Florida Poison Information Center at Tampa General, said the sole maker of coral snake antivenin has stopped production.
She was not sure how frequently coral snakes bite humans, but it is rare.
"It's not something that has a big market and it is expensive to produce," Lewis-Younger said. "Nobody's volunteered to step up to the plate to make antivenin for that particular snake. I don't really know what's going to happen."
One possibility being explored is using antivenin formulated from other snakes in the genus elapidae that are related to coral snakes.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration bulletins mentioned as early as September 2004 that Wyeth Pharmaceuticals planned to discontinue production of coral snake antivenin.
An e-mail was sent Thursday to Wyeth's public relations office seeking comment. The company had not replied by Friday afternoon.
Facchini said the snake attached itself to her left wrist.
"It bit me and hung on for about two minutes," she said. "I thought, 'It looks pretty, so it can't be poisonous.'"
Coral snakes typically hang on and chew poison into the wound, Lewis-Younger said.
Coral snake bites "used to be fatal fairly frequently," she said, "before we had equipment to support respiration. The venom of coral snakes paralyzes respiratory muscles."
Facchini said she hesitated to pull the snake off her left wrist with her right hand, afraid she'd get bitten again. She eventually shook the snake free and called 911.
The ambulance took her to Martin Memorial. By that time, Facchini said, numbness was creeping up her arm. Eventually, it reached her face and neck.
Friday, Facchini said she felt somewhat ill, a common aftereffect of the antivenin.
Varelli said Martin Memorial received a letter last May from Wyeth that said it was stopping production of coral snake antivenin.
"They believe that there's enough of a supply to last through October 2008," Varelli said. "We keep at least 10 vials in both (Martin Memorial in Stuart and Hospital South in Port Salerno). We usually treat a bite with about seven vials."
HARMLESS OR DEADLY?
Two Florida snakes have colorful bands of red, black and yellow. They shouldn't be confused.
• The dangerous coral snake has venom much like a cobra's. Its yellow and red bands touch.
• The scarlet king snake has red and black bands that touch. It is a beneficial snake that eats mice and other vermin. A folk rhyme serves as a reminder:
Red touch yellow, kill a fellow.
Red touch black, friend to Jack.
But Dr. Cynthia Lewis-Younger, managing medical director of the Florida Poison Information Center at Tampa General Hospital, would rather people didn't commit it to memory.
"I don't like teaching people that rhyme," Lewis-Younger said. "People who aren't specially trained shouldn't deliberately get close to snakes. They should be left alone to serve their place in this world."
Link
Linear Mode
