This book describes Poisonous Insect Bites and Stings, Diagnosis and Treatment and Related Diseases

Poisonous Insect Bites

Ant Bite

Just recently my daughter was bitten by an ant while washing her dishes.
Her whole hand became swollen and throbbing with pain and turned red in color within 2 hours.
I told her to elevate the hand above the heart and put ice pack on it.
I gave her an injection of antihistamine and steroid and her on antihistamine, pain killers and steroids.
She was given a course if antibiotics in case the wound turned septic.
An antibiotic and steroid cream was also given.
The next day the hand swelling had gone and was no longer red in color.
It showed how poisonous insect bites can be.

Mosquito Bite

2 months ago my wife was bitten in the left calf by a mosquito.
Immediately her skin started to swell up, turned red and warm and very itchy which may her scratch and make the mosquito bite area even more swollen.
Luckily she did not have a fever because with hot weather because we have a quite a few cases of dengue fever from mosquito bite recently.
I told her to stop scratching because that will cause more swelling and infection.
Instead I gave her a course of antihistamine and steroid to take orally and applied cream (antibiotic and steroid) to the insect bite area.
I also bandaged the insect bite area after applying cream to it to prevent her from scratching it.
This at least stopped the scratching and allowed the medicines to take effect and reduce the allergic reaction to it before it becomes infected.

Bee Stings

A few years ago I was called to treat this Filipino maid who was bitten by a large number of bees while walking past their nest.
Together with some of her friends we managed to remove 200 over bee stings from her scalp and neck.
She was lucky that she had no severe allergy reactions from the bee stings.
There have been cases of people (stung by bees) who develop renal failure and died.

There was a case of a girl who was stung by a bee on her forehead which left her with a swollen eyelid.
After treatment with antihistamine and steroid orally and application of cream (antibiotic and steroid) to the eyelid the swelling went down but at the bee sting wound she develop a keloid scar which took me 3 months treatment with keloid cream for it to subside and disappear.
She did not want injection of steroid to the keloid because it was too near to her eye.

Cutaneous Larva Migrans

Recently my niece while walking on the beach of an island in Malaysia developed a bad rash on her left foot.
She thought she was stung by a poisonous insect.
When she saw me there appeared to be some infected rash on her foot.
I treated her with antibiotics and antihistamine to stop the itch.
After one week the infection seems too cleared up but the rash has become snake like.
She suspected that there were worms under her skin and brought a printed sheet about a girl who had the same condition but was cured with liquid nitrogen spray and albendazole.
I decided to prescribe her the same liquid nitrogen spray and medicine.
She did recover with the treatment.
Later I found that the disease can disappear spontaneously without treatment.

Most insect bites and stings activate nothing more than minor discomfort but some reactions can be deadly, particularly if the person has severe allergy.

TABLE OF CONTENT
Introduction
Chapter 1 Poisonous Insect Bites
Chapter 2 Causes
Chapter 3 Symptoms
Chapter 4 Diagnosis
Chapter 5 Treatment
Chapter 6 Prognosis ...read more