Page 6 - Black Range Naturalist, Vol. 2, No. 2

The Cost of a Snakebite
Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) reports
that roughly 100,000 people a year die from snakebite. The Centers for Disease Control reports that from 7,000 - 8,000 people in the United States are treated for snakebite annually.
With a certain amount of frequency, the inhabitants of the Black Range (humans and their pets) are struck by a rattlesnake. The event can be very traumatic and may involve an air ambulance flight from the Range to Las Cruces or El Paso. In addition to the physical trauma, the financial trauma can also be significant. Many assume that the high cost of antivenom treatment is due to antivenoms’ short shelf life, cost of production, and short supply. The cost issue has been investigated by the Viper Institute, which is part of the University of Arizona’s College of Medicine.
The hospital markup (see below) results in a substantial price difference in the cost of treatment in the United States versus Mexico. An article in The American Journal of Medicine reported that the cost of drugs in the United States is sometimes as much as a thousand times greater than in Mexico. From the article: “We were crestfallen to discover...that the chosen wholesale price for this otherwise excellent drug was set too high to be cost effective, even in the treatment of critically ill children...Somehow, a US drug whose sister product retailed in Mexico at $100 was resulting
in bills to Arizona patients of between $7,900 and $39,652 per vial.”
You will find assorted information about the cost of a vial of rattlesnake antivenom. Whatever the source, you can be sure that the quoted cost will be high, especially if you consider that numerous vials of anti-venom may be required to treat a snakebite effectively.
Neurotoxic Venom
Historically the Mojave Rattlesnake has been associated with neurotoxic venom, while other rattlesnake species have been associated with hemotoxic venom. There is growing evidence that the venom of several rattlesnake species is shifting in composition to be both hemotoxic and neurotoxic. Not good news for those who are struck.
Some sources attribute the shift to the fact that the prey of many rattlesnake species have evolved more resistance to hemotoxic venom. The rattlesnakes have, in turn, (apparently) begun to develop more complex venoms. In the short term, for humans who have been struck, this means that treatment regimes often involve more vials of antivenom than was previously the case.
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