When it comes to diabetes, everyone must be familiar with it. However, when blood sugar control is still not ideal through the standardized use of oral hypoglycemic agents, insulin injection has become an inevitable choice for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. Many people may not know that injecting insulin requires a special syringe. What is the difference between an insulin syringe and a regular syringe? How should it be used? Today, KOHOPE will introduce you to the relevant knowledge of insulin syringes.

1. Why use a special insulin syringe for insulin?

Insulin syringes, as the name suggests, are syringes specially designed to inject insulin, which usually consist of four parts, namely needle cap, injection needle, syringe, and pusher. The reason why you need to use a special syringe to inject insulin, which can not be replaced by a common syring is that the scale units marked on the two are different. The scale marked on the special insulin syringe is the insulin unit, while the scale on the ordinary syringe is the milliliter. The minimum unit of an ordinary syringe is usually 0.1 ml, which is equivalent to 4 units of insulin after conversion, and the insulin dose that most patients need to inject is not an integer multiple of 4. Therefore, if an ordinary syringe is used, the patient not only needs to convert the dose and volume, but also it is difficult to accurately draw the required dose.

2. What types of insulin syringes are there?

Disposable insulin syringes on the market mainly include ordinary insulin syringes, insulin injection pens and needle-free insulin syringes. Ordinary insulin syringes are designed and manufactured in accordance with the standard of single use. They are plastic products with exquisite workmanship, sharp needles and clear scales. In the insulin injection treatment, it should be ensured that one replacement at a time; the insulin injection pen is divided into an insulin prefilled injection pen and a refillable insulin injection pen. Insulin prefilled injection pens are disposable products and can be discarded together with the pen after use. The refill can replace the body of the insulin injection pen and can be used repeatedly, but the needles are disposable, and new refills and needles need to be replaced when they are used up. The insulin injection pen can be carried around and is easy to use; the needle-free injector uses high pressure to make insulin penetrate the skin surface in the form of a "liquid needle", penetrate into the subcutaneous tissue, and complete the injection with light pain and accurate dose. Since the physical needle is removed, the patient's psychological pressure and mental burden can be reduced. In addition, the needle-free injection is sprayed at a high speed in the form of a mist, and the diffusion and absorption are relatively uniform, which can avoid the generation of induration to a certain extent. However, needle-free syringes are expensive and have high economic costs.

It should be noted that there are many types of insulin, and there are specially matched insulin syringes. Insulin syringes should not be used indiscriminately and must be used with matching insulin, otherwise it will easily lead to inaccurate insulin dosage and unstable blood sugar. Therefore, when purchasing, it is necessary to choose an insulin syringe according to the different insulin used. For example, the common models are divided into U-40 and U-100.

3. What precautions should be taken when using insulin syringes?

Before injection, patients need to wash their hands, check the type of insulin and the injection dose, exhaust the air in the safe insulin syringe, select the parts with more subcutaneous fat, such as the two sides of the abdomen, the upper outer part of the thigh, etc., use alcohol cotton balls to disinfect the skin. After the alcohol is dry, pinch up the injected skin with your thumb, index finger, and middle finger, insert the 4mm needle vertically, inject the 6mm needle at a 45° angle, advance the liquid medicine, hold it for a few seconds, slowly pull out the needle, and press with a cotton ball, no need to massage the injection site. It should be noted that when injecting insulin, the injection site must be rotated frequently, and the interval between each injection point should be more than 1 cm to avoid repeated injections at the same site, otherwise it will easily lead to local subcutaneous fat atrophy or hyperplasia, which will affect the absorption of insulin. In addition, avoid wiping the needle tip with alcohol-based reagents. Alcohol will strip the coating of the needle tip, make the needle core rough, and increase the pain during injection.

Similarly, when using insulin pens and pen needles for injections, there is no need to wipe the needles with alcohol because the needles are sterilized at the time of manufacture.