I had to have an immigration medical exam yesterday. I had to have 2 shots, one for tetanus and the other a flu shot, and then they took some of my blood.
When getting the shots, the doctor just jabbed a needle into my upper arm. Why are injections seemingly administered in a random spot in the arm and why didn’t the doctor have to spend a few seconds finding a vein like the nurse did with my blood test. Surely the vaccine would need to be administered in the bloodstream?
In: Biology
There are complications with injecting into a vein. It takes longer to administer, there is risk of phlebitis, it is harder to do, and some things are dangerous to inject directly into a vein.
For occasions where alternatives are adequate, then there is no value added by injecting into a vein.
Plus, most doctors probably don’t cannulate very often, and you can’t really screw up an IM injection.
Depends on the type of drug and the delivery method.
I have chemo that gets directly put into my superior vena cava via a picc line, a white blood cell booster that just needs to be under the skin which I typically just pinch a fold in my arm or stomach and inject and I had an intramuscular shot in my arm for a vaccination recently too.
Some medications need to be administered IM (intramuscular) because they’ll be too potent if put directly into the blood stream, it takes a little longer to be absorbed IM
Vaccinations are typically intramuscular, so can be injected into any large muscle. Upper arm is just a convenient place.
Not all shots go into a vein. Some need to go into a muscle. Some need to go into the fatty layer of skin.
Because its an intramuscular injection. There are intravenous injections, intradermal, arterial, synovial, spinal injections to. There are lots of different ways to administer medications
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