Question About Injection Technique

[Procyon]

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Hey,

I figured I'd ask this question to the actual docs/docs in training. So tonight I had to give myself self-injections of a med for my Crohn's disease. The whole thing had me a little stressed out, because it was my first time, and I guess I'm just nervous that I screwed up.

For some reason, I was really paranoid about hitting a blood vessel, so I guess I might have aspirated a lot. As in, pulled back on the plunger further than I meant to, just to make sure that no blood entered the syringe. Is it possible to give myself an embolism from that or something? Now I'm all nervous, again. 🙁

 

[Scaredshizzles]

The blood vessels (at least the arterial type) in your subcutaneous and muscle tissue are really quite small so you're not really going to get an air embolus....not to mention you were pulling back on a plunger that was filled with liquid medicine, not air, so you weren't even introducing air really. Actually the entire notion that you need to aspirate in the first place on im injections is pretty unproven. Unless you're injecting something like lidocaine which you know can have major circulatory effects, I don't even know if it is something worth doing..