Heated Debates: Hot-Water Immersion or Ice Packs as First Aid for Cnidarian Envenomations?

Cnidarian envenomations are an important public health problem, responsible for more deaths than shark attacks annually. For this reason, optimization of first-aid care is essential. According to the published literature, cnidarian venoms and toxins are heat labile at temperatures safe for human application, which supports the use of hot-water immersion of the sting area(s). However, ice packs are often recommended and used by emergency personnel. After conducting a systematic review of the evidence for the use of heat or ice in the treatment of cnidarian envenomations, we conclude that the majority of studies to date support the use of hot-water immersion for pain relief and improved health outcomes.

• Publication year

  2016

• Venue

  Toxins

• Publication date

  2016-04-01

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.3390/toxins8040097PMID 27043628PMCID 4848624
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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