The Cold Blooded News The Newsletter of the Colorado Herpetological Society Volume 28, Number 10;   October, 2001

Hospitals Fall Short on Antivenin

"It's kind of scary right now," said Diana Bond, pharmacy director at University Medical Center in Las Vegas, which treats snakebite victims from Nevada, northern Arizona, eastern California and southern Utah.

No agency tracks how much serum hospitals have in stock, and the Food and Drug Administration hasn't declared a shortage of either of the two antivenin serums available, FDA spokeswoman Lenore Gelb said Wednesday. But some major hospitals in Arizona, Nevada and Utah - all prime rattlesnake country - are close to running out.

At Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center, the Phoenix area's only poison control center, there's enough of a newly formulated antivenin to treat one patient and some of the older serum has come from other hospitals to treat five more. "We expect to run out in about a week," said Dr. Steven Curry, director of medical toxicology at Good Samaritan, which treats about 70 of the 300 snakebite victims in Arizona each year.

At the Utah Poison Control Center in Salt Lake City, there's only enough antivenin left to treat two or three patients, said the center's director, Dr. Martin Caravati. The center has treated 25 snakebite victims this year, nearly double what it had last year.

Going without antivenin doesn't necessarily mean a snakebite victim will die, but it does mean a longer and more painful stay in the hospital, doctors say.

Doctors say drug shortages are not uncommon but this year's problem is made worse by a switch in the manufacturers of antivenin. Pennsylvania-based Wyeth Ayerst Laboratories, the only U.S. producer of antivenin until earlier this year, will stop manufacturing its serum in December, Wyeth spokesman Doug Petkus said. The company is only filling back orders now, he said.

Protherics PLC, a company that began producing antivenin, CroFab, this spring, can't keep up with the demand. "We're working as fast as we can," said Russell LaMontagne, spokesman for Savage Laboratories, which distributes CroFab.

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