Elsevier

Toxicon

Volume 45, Issue 7, 1 June 2005, Pages 861-863
Toxicon

Two Sri Lankan cases of identified sea snake bites, without envenoming

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.toxicon.2005.02.010Get rights and content

Abstract

Sea snakes are among the most venomous creatures encountered around coasts and reefs, in estuaries, rivers and at sea. Their venoms are more toxic than those of land snakes. However, they are rarely aggressive or menacing. Bites have become unusual with the advent of modern fishing methods but the two encounters we report, in the Indian Ocean off the shores of Sri Lanka, emphasise that sea snake bites may not result in envenoming.

Section snippets

Case 1

A 7-year-old boy was bitten by a sea snake when wading in the sea off Galle Face, Colombo's best known and popular beach promenade. The snake was recovered and identified as Pelamis platurus a highly venomous species belonging to the sub family Hydrophiinae (family Elapidae) (Fig. 1). Its total length was 70 cm.

On admission, a linear scratch mark of 2.5 cm was present on the dorsal aspect of his right wrist (Fig. 2) without surrounding redness or swelling. He had no myalgia, ptosis,

Case 2

A 39-year-old German tourist was bitten by a sea snake on his left leg, when swimming about 1 mile off the southern coast of Sri Lanka in Bentota. He killed the snake and presented to hospital 4 h later. The snake was identified as Enhydrina schistosa (Elapidae, Hydrophiinae) total length 110 cm (Fig. 3a and b).

On admission he had mild redness around two bite marks. There was no pain, local swelling or oozing from the fang marks nor regional lymphadenopathy. Signs of systemic envenoming such as

Discussion

Sea snake bites are encountered very infrequently but among them those associated with non-envenoming (‘dry bites’) are frequent. (1) Sea snakes are not common in the coastal waters of Sri Lanka and the risk to swimmers is very small although fishermen have encountered sea snakes, when hauling in fishing nets (de Silva, 1994, Fernando and Gooneratne, 1983, Reid, 1975). (2) Sea snake bites are very rare in children.

Sea snake bites are usually painless and envenoming does not cause local signs

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the staff of the National hospital, Sri Lanka and staff of Lady Ridgeway children's hospital Colombo, for their support given in the care of these two patients. We would like to acknowledge Dr. Malik Fernando and Prof. Rathnasooriya for helping us in identification of these sea snakes. We thank also Prof. David Warrell for his helpful criticism.

References (6)

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