Air bubbles in Syringe

[terri1962]

I give my cat such a small dose of Lantus(.50) its almost impossible to get the air bubbles out of the syringe. I know now you are not supposed to push the insulin back up into the syringe so my question is how else do you get the air bubbles out? Is it okay to leave some air bubbles in?
I tried pushing the insulin out in the sink and redrawing still getting air bubbles. Don`t want to waste all the insulin.
Terri

 

[Anyname]

Look at the vial. The rubber stopper inside the vial can be pushed up towards the insulin inside. I get big air bubbles when the black stopper has air between it and the insulin. You can push on the stopper to make it meet up with the liquid inside so as no bubbles in the vial. I don't know why this stops air getting into the syringe but it does. DH was trying to explain this to me this morning and showed me what the problem was in filling the syringe. Push on the black stopper with a pencil or small object to get rid of air space in vial. That's one suggestion - suspect you will get more.

 

[squeem3]

Push the insulin syringe plunger all the way down to the zero line. Insert the insulin syringe needle into the bottle or pen and draw up a little more insulin than you need. So 1 unit instead of exactly 0.5 units. Remove the insulin syringe needle from the bottle/pen. While holding it upside down (needle pointing up), gently tap/flick the syringe barrel to float air bubbles up towards the needle. Then slowly push the plunger up to expell the air bubbles and the excess insulin. There is more insulin in the 10 ml bottle or 3ml pen that you will ever need before it poops out so don't worry about wasting insulin :smile:

Some brands of insulin syringes are more prone to air bubbles than others. I could never get BD insulin syringes to work with Levemir. I always had way too many sticky air bubbles so I ended up using Monojects. BD worked great for Lantus, though.