[Snakebites in the State of Goiás, Brazil]

Ophidic accidents are a serious health problem for tropical countries, because are responsible for the high incidence of morbidity and mortality.

This article describes aspects of snakebite epidemiology in the State of Goiás, Brazil.

Notifications about the accidents caused by poisonous snakes have been analysed for Government of the State of Goiás (Brazil), Health Department, from 1998 to 2000.

In this period, 3261 accidents caused by poisonous snakes have been notified, which represented the average annual incidence rate of 20 to 23/100,000 persons. The vast majority of cases occurred from October to April. The classification of the snake genus had been possible in 2350 cases and the distribution was: Bothrops (78.6%), Crotalus (20.8%) and Micrurus (6%). The age distribution shows that the accidents had been suffered by 20 to 39 year old people with great predominance in males (78%). The anatomical areas more frequently bitten were feet (43.6%), legs (23.2%) and hands (20.1%). At the health center 80% of the patients had been treated within sixth hour after the accident. The distribution according to the severity of poisoning was: light (31.6%), moderate (47.5%) and severe (9.6%). The most common complications were necrosis bite site (31.8%) in bothropic envenoming and acute renal failure (1.2%) in crotalic envenoming. The case fatality rate was 0.46%, been the most rate observed in crotalic envenoming (1%).

Accidents owing to poisonous snakes are frequent in the State of Goiás, the young male population is more often attacked and they are an important cause of death.