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Opioids Air bubble IV death

fermonos

fermonos

Bluelighter
Joined
Sep 29, 2016
Messages
413
Okay so what is the chances of actually dying from an air bubble going to the brain when IV'ing or can it even happen? Just I've never heard of it happening in the news ever in my whole life, but I always hear scare stories about it.

So please let me know your opinions, backed up with facts and sources if you can THANKS!


Also glad to be back first post in so many months haha!
 
Hi.

It can be deadly, but a lot of air is needed. Even so, I would not risk injecting myself with 1cm3.
I found this in a digital science magazine called "Muy Interesante":

"... The entry of air into a blood vessel creates bubbles that move through the bloodstream, if it is small, it will be absorbed, but a large volume can form emboli and clog arteries and veins, and becomes deadly from 50 cm3.

When the puncture is made in a vein, the gas embolism usually affects the lungs; If the air is injected into an artery, the circulatory collapse usually occurs in the central nervous system (hemiplegia) or in the heart (angina pectoris, infarction). In addition, we must take into account that the air contains microbes and bacteria that at the intramuscular or subcutaneous level cause infections, fatal in 30% of the cases ... "


DocLad
 
I think the levels being discussed by the OP fall into the 10-20 unit range that floats to the top of a prepared shot, just a smidge less that 50ml.
 
Generally speaking, it won't kill you in small amounts. I myself and numerous friends have (inadvertently) injected air bubbles on hundreds of occasions without adverse reactions or affects.

Yes, LARGE amounts of air can cause problems and complications leading to death, but a few CC's left in a syringe aren't harmful.
 
You've heard of the bends, right? Not the early Radiohead album, but the thing that kills Scuba Divers/ more often air-pump oyster divers? Those are nitrogen bubbles coming out of the diver's blood, getting lodged in their brain and often murdering them. Not all of them, fine, but the survivors are sometimes left with stroke-like symptoms.

The bubbles in those cases are microscopic. The size of blood clots.

Please do not inject air into your veins. Maybe your blood pressure will collapse them and the air will dissolve neatly, but maybe enough will be left to cause a fucking embolism. See, it's less like, "will this bubble kill my brain," it's "where in my body will this bubble lodge before finally dissolving". If it gets stuck in some capillaries in your calf muscle, all you'll notice is some pain. You'll then say, "hey, it's perfectly safe to inject fucking air into my veins."
 
An air bubble won't make it past your heart, if it even made it past your lungs, so its not a danger to your brain, and 10 to 20 units is .1 to .2 cm3, a far cry from 50 cm3, let alone a couple units,
 
I used to be extremely scared of this. (when I first started IV) The slightest pocket of air at the top of my rig would creep me out and I would
push up till I got liquid from the tip.
Now I've realized after seeing others do it, that that little bit doesnt matter. Plus some times when I have trouble hitting and I have to
reposition my shot several times I would loose a drop each time. Im sure it's not much but maybe a few mg lost this way.
 
Scrofula said:
You've heard of the bends, right? Not the early Radiohead album, but the thing that kills Scuba Divers/ more often air-pump oyster divers? Those are nitrogen bubbles coming out of the diver's blood, getting lodged in their brain and often murdering them. Not all of them, fine, but the survivors are sometimes left with stroke-like symptoms.

The bubbles in those cases are microscopic. The size of blood clots.

Please do not inject air into your veins. Maybe your blood pressure will collapse them and the air will dissolve neatly, but maybe enough will be left to cause a fucking embolism. See, it's less like, "will this bubble kill my brain," it's "where in my body will this bubble lodge before finally dissolving". If it gets stuck in some capillaries in your calf muscle, all you'll notice is some pain. You'll then say, "hey, it's perfectly safe to inject fucking air into my veins."
Click to expand...

I guess that might happen if you injected air into an artery... but pretty sure veins bring blood to the heart not the brain. If it was gonna kill you, itd stop your heart.
 
I've watched my nurses and doctors flick the syringe repeatedly to get air to the top, then they slowly push the syringe up until some medicine comes out.

After seeing this hundreds of times I would say just be safe and push all the air out. If they do it every single time then I'd think it's very important.

I IM B12 every 2 weeks. My nurse was adamant about getting all air out.

I would listen to health care professionals on this subject over people who might be afraid to miss one drop of their drug.
 
Not that nurses and doctors can't fall victim to the same myths and misconceptions we do, but they are trained to do that to ensure accurate dosing, it has nothing to do with danger from injecting air, and they were never taught about any repercussions of doing so in nursing/medical school. In fact, leaving a unit or so of air in the barrel makes is easier to register as it prevents you from having to pull back reducing the chances of slipping out of the vein and missing.

Even things widely circulated and taught throughout the medical field are not necessarily true.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entr...ts-feel-less-pain_us_57055d56e4b0a506064dfcdb

The results of the survey were distressing. Forty percent of first-year medical students and one in four residents answered that they thought black patients had thicker skin than white patients, and a full 50 percent of the respondents thought that at least one of the false facts was possibly, probably or definitely true.
Click to expand...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4843483/

To hurt yourself by injecting air you are going to need to rig up some special device, or inject completely empty syringes over and over again.
 
Nurses are superstitious, not the best source for medical knowledge.

A bubble in your veins, if it doesn't lodge somewhere on the way, will go to your heart (which is "big" and usually won't trap a bubble) and then to your lungs, where it will hopefully stop and exchange with the air. But there are ways those bubbles get around that.

Source
a venous air embolism always has the potential to become an arterial embolism if a connection between the two systems exists. If a right to left pressure gradient exists, the gas can then travel from the venous to the arterial circulation. For example, if a patient has a patent foramen ovale, which is present in 30% of the general population, this can result in air traveling from the low pressure right atrium to the arterial system if a pressure gradient occurs.

The physiologic effects of venous air embolism are similar to that of pulmonary embolism of any etiology as evidenced by: (1) elevated pulmonary artery and right ventricular pressures; (2) increased ventilation/perfusion mismatch; (3) intrapulmonary shunting; and (4) increased alveolar dead space. Air accumulation in the left ventricle impedes diastolic filling, and during systole air is pumped into the coronary arteries, disrupting coronary perfusion. The lodging of the air in the vasculature results in acute hypoxemia and hypercapnia. The acute changes in right ventricular pressure result in right ventricular strain, which can lead to right heart failure, decreased cardiac output, right ventricular ischemia, and arrhythmia. This can be followed by systemic circulatory collapse, and even death.
​

NO, it is not fucking safe to inject any amount of air into your veins. Complications may be rare, but do you want to risk them, when all it takes is a little tap tap and push? FFS, folks.
 
Scrofula said:
Nurses are superstitious, not the best source for medical knowledge.

.
Click to expand...
Also, alot of nurses believe they are experts on every area of medicine when in reality they don't know what the fuck they're talking about a large part of the time.
 
Seriously. I don't know what it is they're all diverting, but I've heard stuff from nurses that first graders know your body can't do.

I think it's the vocational training. Memorize all kinds of facts and numbers, plus actually working on patients, but then it's just assumed anything more is too much or something, and they're never taught why or how or what for.

Like, don't worry your pretty heads, memorize all the diastolics and systolics and PRQTs, the names for all the different classes of hypertension medicine; but something like, "your heart 'beats' to move your blood around," well that's a concept too abstract and vast and best left to the men-doctors. You go on believing a heart beat is the sound of your guardian angel trying to escape from your chest.

ETA: and oh yes, they'll tell you all about the best way to treat guardian angel over-excitement, which they can tell you're suffering from.

ETA: And I just fucked myself karmically. I love you nurses, you bring me pain meds and ice chips! I don't care if you think ice chips are snow bunny droppings, I need them, please.
 
I injected IV for 4 or 5 years i am not doing it for 30 days now and i injected air bubbles, and nothing happened. my body studies all okay.
 
fermonos said:
Okay so what is the chances of actually dying from an air bubble going to the brain when IV'ing or can it even happen? Just I've never heard of it happening in the news ever in my whole life, but I always hear scare stories about it.

So please let me know your opinions, backed up with facts and sources if you can THANKS!


Also glad to be back first post in so many months haha!
Click to expand...

you will die if you inject enough; but it's rather large. more than 1ml. it's best to avoid injecting air.
 
OK, for relative risk of serious injury, it's like not wearing a seat belt, not as bad as infection from sharing needles or bareback breeding. Some people can not wear a seat belt for ten years and not be in an accident. My friend didn't wear one (he was a huge dork too, IDK what the deal was) and of course you know he's dead. Blah blah, squirting out the air is as time-consuming and difficult as putting on a seat belt.

I feel like people are so niggardly with their dope, they don't want to risk losing that tiny little bit that comes out before the bubble, figure it's worth it for long odds of serious maiming.

If you inject some by accident, relax, odds are you'll be fine. But when this is about best practices, don't go around acting like routinely doing it is remotely "safe".


You may die from the tiniest bubble. Even though it's rare (only rare through injection, not rare for other procedures), it happens.

It does not have to lodge in your brain to kill you.

It does not have to pass into an artery to kill you.

A third of the population has the congenital heart formation that allows bubbles to pass into arterial blood. Do you know if you're one of them or not?

You don't have to die to get hurt from these things.

An air embolism in your brain is just the dramatic one.

I have to get preachy, they pay me for this (and also because it's just stupid not to take the little effort).
 
I'm sorry, it doesn't happen. I am not advocating going around pumping barrels full of air into your veins, but if we are talking about leaving a couple units out to make it easier to register...well, there has never, ever been a single recorded case of it killing someone. In fact, it is extremely short of the amount that is known(as in actually happened, not a theory based on what we know about the body) to be required to cause any health problem whatsoever and then we are talking about pulmonary embolisms, because blood from your veins makes a trip by your lungs before being sent to your heart.

In fact, IV lines fill up with air all the time. Much, much more than a few units...

And if we are talking harm reduction, I would say the risks carried with missing your shot because it slipped out as you were registering are FAR greater than the risks inherent with injecting a minuscule amount of air.
 
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