When you donate blood the needle goes into a large, visible vein in your arm or hand but when getting a shot the needle just goes somewhere in your arm.
In: Biology
Many injections don’t have to be directly into a blood vein/artery. Just injecting into muscular tissue alone provides fairly rapid absorption into the bloodstream without the risks of using a vien.
There are three ways medication is injected. Most things that are a “shot in the arm” are injected into a large muscle. When they pinch your arm they are locating that muscle to make sure they inject in the right part of your arm. These are called intramuscular injections. Some injections are under the skin which are called subcutaneous injections. Then there are IV or intravenous injections/infusions, these would be the ones that look more like when you give blood. For the intravenous injections there is a needle inserted into a large vein and medication is “pushed” into the blood stream for absorption.
There are a lot of drugs that can go multiple routes to get in your body (into a vein, into a muscle, into fat, oral, sublingual, etc). There are also a lot of drugs that have to go a specific route because of how the body breaks them down or the effect they can have if they are particularly harsh.
Like you give insulin into fatty tissue because of how the body can use it. You can also give insulin straight into a vein during emergency situations because it works faster that way.
You can give certain nausea medicine (phenergan) into a big vein and into the muscle, but you can’t give in fat because it is too harsh and will tear up your fatty tissue.
Vaccines are designed to go into muscle. But typically the muscles we use for vaccines aren’t particularly vein-y. If you were to accidentally give a vaccine in a vein, it would likely be okay, it just might mess with the effectiveness of the vaccine.
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