1983 Volume 24 Issue 3 Pages 256-262
The patient is a 14 year old boy, who admitted to our Department because of severe hemorrhagic diathesis and oliguria following a bite by Rhabdophis tigrinus. He had a snake bite on the 5th finger of right hand on September, 28, 1980. After 9 hrs, he noticed the bleeding at the sites of snake bite and gingiva. On the next day, he developed nasal, gastrointestinal, petechial and subcutaneous bleeding and hematoma 2 days later, and macroscopic hematuria 3 days later.
Hemostatic examinations revealed complete incoagulability of whole blood clotting time, partial thromboplastin time, prothrombin time, serial thrombin time, and decreased amount of fibrinogen and elevated level of FDP. However, platelet count increased up to 50×104/mm3 at about 30 hrs after the snake bite. About 34 hrs after the first examination, platelet count decreased to 2.3×104/mm3, and at this time a diagnosis of disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) syndrome was made. As antiserum against this snake venom was not available, exchange blood transfusion was performed. His clinical feature and the hemostatic function were recovered well on the following days, while chronic renal failure has been persisted for several months.
From above results, the exchange blood transfusion is favorable therapy in order to exclude the snake venom from the blood circulation.
