Marine stings including jellyfish

[AxeMan]

Interestingly, or I thought so anyway, the current NHS advice is not to use vinegar:

http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Stings-marine-creatures/Pages/Treatment.aspx

[Garf]

It's a little more complicated than the headline might suggest. This is the study that suggests vinegar may make things worse, but the picture is not as simplistic as that. Vinegar may increase the amount of vemon delivered from nematocysts that fire, but definitely inhibits nematocysts firing in the first place so is still useful. The paper also has some vocal critics. The Australian Resus Council still recommend the use of vinegar to treat envenomation by jellyfish, and they know quite a bit about serious jellyfish stings.

Welfare P., Little M., Pereira P. & Seymour J. (2014). An in-vitro examination of the effect of vinegar on discharged nematocysts of Chironex fleckeri. Diving and hyperbaric medicine : the journal of the South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society, 44 (1) 30-34


http://resus.org.au/?wpfb_dl=41

[Pete Bullen]

A lot depends on the organism that causes the sting. Very useful doc here http://jellyrisk.eu/media/cms_page_media/113/FirstAid_Jellyfish%20envenomation_english.pdf

[steelemonkey]

Bang goes my only excuse for p!ssing on annoying buddies. "I thought you had a jellyfish on you."

[Tim Digger]

There has been a lot of misunderstanding about the use of vinegar. A lot of people used it to treat the pain after, not to aid removal of nematocysts by inhibiting firing. One problem is any of the chemicals are often not immediately available and application late after removal of stingers is pointless and may well be more painful. Al I too would trust Australian opinions on this over an NHS committee.

[mark weaver]

We had a dive last week on a 70m deep dark wreck where we encountered lots of lions maine jellyfish. Everybody got stung from mild (including me) to very bad, one guy when i left was still in hospital after 3 nights due to having a severe reaction, probably due to underlying issues.
This lead to much research on jellyfish stings and the conclusion was to avoid vinegar especially if you do not know what species of jellyfish inflicted the sting, same for pissing on people.

[Burgo]

Got stung by a purple stinger (Pelagia noctiluca) last week., again. I've always scraped off any tentacles / goo with a shell or sharp piece of rock. Don't wash in fresh water - only salt. When you exit water pinch a few paper serviettes out of a beach bar and soak in vinegar. 10 mins and it's all a memory.

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