Healthline Blogs
Dr. Paul Auerbach is the world's leading outdoor health expert. His blog offers tips on outdoor safety and advice on how to handle wilderness emergencies.
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Jan 14 2013
Death From a Brown Recluse Spider Bite
“Emergency Department Death From Systemic Loxoscelism” (Annals of Emergency Medicine 2012;60:439-441) describes the unfortunate death of a 3-year-old child resulting from a brown recluse spider bite. In this case report, the child died from sev...
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Nov 12 2012
Blood Clotting Profiles in the Management of Copperhead Snake Bites
This post is mostly for the doctors, but may be of interest to herpetologists and others interested in snake venom poisoning. Copperhead (Agkistrodon contortrix) snake bites are traditionally not difficult for physicians to manage, because the...
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Oct 29 2012
Overdiagnosis and Mistreatment of Malaria
At a medical meeting where I was recently lecturing about the intersection between wilderness medicine and disaster medicine, a wise person from the audience reminded the listeners that if they really wanted to be prepared to participate in gl...
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Oct 10 2012
Hemostatic Dressing to Manage a Bleeding Leech Bite
In the Spring 2012 issue of the journal Wilderness & Environmental Medicine appears a terrific case report by Preston Fedor entitled “Novel Use of a Hemostatic Dressing in the Management of a Bleeding Leech Bite: A Case Report and Review of ...
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Oct 04 2012
A Newly-Recognized Tick Borne Illness
In the New England Journal of Medicine (2012;367:834-41), there is an article by Laura McMullan, Ph.D. and colleagues entitled “A New Phlebovirus Associated with Severe Febrile Illness in Missouri.” Two men from northwestern Missouri are descri...
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Aug 10 2012
Black Widow Spider Envenomation
In the most recent issue of Wilderness & Environmental Medicine appears an article by Dr. Roy Strowd and colleagues, entitled “Black Widow Spider Envenomation, A Rare Cause of Horner’s Syndrome" (WEM 2012;23:158). Horner’s syndrome is a tria...
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Aug 07 2012
A Few Interesting Snakebite Articles
At this past year’s American College of Emergency Physicians Annual Scientific Assembly, which was held in San Francisco, I had a brief conversation with Dr. William Meggs, an expert in envenomation from snakebite. We discussed a number of topi...
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Jun 26 2012
Rattlesnake Bite Photo
There are two excellent photographs of a rattlesnake bite victim that appear in the June 10, 2010 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (362;23:2212). Entitled “Rattlesnake Envenomation” in the IMAGES IN CLINICAL MEDICINE feature, they s...
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Apr 16 2012
A New Method for Recognizing Dangerous Snakes in the United States and Canada
In addition to recognition of definitive clinical signs and symptoms of venomous snakebite, the way to determine whether or not a biting snake is venomous is to identify it properly. In the United States and Canada, that is usually determined f...
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Dec 05 2011
Bee Aware Program
There is a site on the Internet named "Bee Aware" that provides information for patients and physicians about stinging insect allergies and venom immunotherapy. The quality of the information is good, so this website makes an excellent referenc...
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