Aspirating and Injecting

Well, 2 things happened to me during my injection today which I didn’t think would ever happen.

First, I inject into my thigh with a 1.25” 27g needle. I always make sure my injection site is away from any veins I can see on the surface. I’ve hit a surface vein before and it bleeds more than normal when I pull the needle out.

But this morning I put the needle in all the way, aspirated, and drew back pure blood. I was told by others that aspirating is a waste of time. I aborted my injection, and picked a new site. Now I am wondering what would have happened if I finished the original injection.

Secondly. When I went to cap my needle, the needle went straight through the middle of the plastic cap and got me in the finger, these things are way sharper than I thought. Not a big deal, but just a warning for you guys that have a spouse do your injections.

To hit a vein would be really hard. You’re going straight down in a perpendicular line. Think how nurses draw blood from your vein. They go in parallel. You can’t inject into a vein perpendicularly. The needle would go right through it. I mean it’s possible to pull back blood if you just enter the vein and hold super steady. The opposite pressure of pushing liquid in would go through it. Even if you asparate, when you starting injecting you’re likely in a different spot anyways depth wise.

Not true at all.

Nurses go parallel because of the particular vein they are drawing from, and it’s very close to the skin. There are lots more veins (well really more smaller vessels), not to mention major arteries (very unlikely to hit this guy unless you are injecting in the inner thigh…OUCH!!), very deep in the tissue.

The OP was very smart to change injection sites. If you choose not to aspirate, It’s a very small chance of hitting a vein/ vessel perfectly to inject the test straight into it, but there is still that very small chance. If you aspirate, there is zero chance.

Now I’ve never injected test into a vein personally, but I have read the accounts of those who have, and I guarantee you that those guys will never inject IM again without aspirating.

There are plenty of guys (and even some on this forum) who have never aspirated and have been extremely lucky. Then again there are plenty of people who have smoked cigarettes their entire life and never had cancer either, so it’s dealers choice…and you may or may not get away with it. For my money though, aspirating when I do IM injections is just way too easy, and it’s very cheap insurance.

Edit to add…

There are even doctors who do not aspirate and don’t advise to…but you also have to consider the fact that they don’t typically give IM injections in the thigh either. They usually inject in the delt or the glutes where there is much less chance of an accident.

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