Why aspirate for an im injection?

Answer 1

It is done to check whether the needle has hit any blood vessel. Aspiration is especially important when you are administering anesthesia, for example, during a dental procedure, all anesthesia are local, meaning only a small area of your body will get numb, and by injecting the drug into a blood vessel it will follow the blood stream into other parts of the body. With that said, it does matter what type of injection you are administering, if it is some sort of vaccine, it may not cause any complications even if it gets in your blood stream.

Answer 2

Yes, the current flu shots that are injected (not nasal spray), are to be given IM (intramuscularly). With any IM shot, the syringe is aspirated to be sure that there is no frank blood around the needle, which could mean that the needle is in, or has opened, a vein. The IM medicines are not to be given IV (intravenously), so if the needle is in or near an open vein, the medicine could directly enter the blood stream, which might be harmful, or make the medicine ineffective. This test for the position of the needle is done so that the needle can be moved if it is in or close to the vein.

Other types of injections may or may not need to be aspirated for this reason. Only trained professionals should be giving injections of any kind, and they would know whether to aspirate or not. If someone giving an injection does not know, then they need additional training before injecting any medications.

Answer 3

It is typical to gently aspirate before injecting solutions into muscle to be sure the needle is not in a vein. Since flu vaccines are given IM (intra-muscularly) then it is usual for this to be done so the vaccine does not get put into a vein by mistake.

Answer 4

Typically Heparin, if given as an injection, is given as a subcutaneous(SQ) injection. only intramuscular(IM) injections have to be aspirated. Aspiration, or pulling back on the syringe and looking for blood before giving the medication, is used to make sure that an IM drug will not accidentally be given directly into the blood stream (IV), which could be very dangerous. While SQ drugs used to be aspirated, it was decided more recently that the needles used for these injections do not typically go deep enough to actually enter a main blood vessel (only capillaries). Therefore it is not necessary to aspirate before a SQ injection.