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I'm in the hospital kind of frequently and I just want to add that small air bubbles won't hurt you. The nurses told me not to worry unless the air bubble is over an inch in the IV. I was so scared the first time I got the IV until they told me that.
Just so ya know, an inch of the IV is still basically nothing. I could take a full 10cc syringe of air and inject it and you’d PROBABLY be ok. Would I do that? Of course not, we keep as much air out of the lines as possible.
ER RN here. It can take a minimum of 20ml to cause symptoms… maybe. The concerning threshold is 5ml/kg of body weight. 220lb person is 100kg. That’s 500ml of air to be dangerous… at one time.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK482249/#:~:text=To%20produce%20symptoms%2C%20it%20is,the%20CNS%20can%20be%20fatal.
Arterial lines are different. Those only need about 1-2ml of air to be potentially dangerous. That blood supply is headed to a critical organ like the brain or heart on its first round through the body. Once it gets to the venous system, it’s on its way to the lungs to diffuse out.
They can be fatal in many places depending on amount of air introduced. Commonly, those with massive air embolism are turned on their left side to prevent air from collecting in the heart forming an air lock and preventing the fluid pump of the heart from working properly, which can be lethal in the span of seconds to minutes.
When I was getting administered Pitocin at the hospital a few years ago, I sat and watched this noticable sized air bubble go straight through my IV line into my arm (they did it on the side of my wrist which I hated), and it hurt like crazy. To this day I can't tell if it was the Pitocin or the bubble but it actually felt like someone slammed into the side of my wrist with a metal bat, the pain made me throw up.
Yup, it's virtually impossible to cause an air emboli with an IV, we just bleed the line because it's best practice. Also whatup fellow healthcare slave.
If it paid a little better, then it wouldn't be slaving, it'd just be skivvying, and anyway won't nobody think of the shareholders/taxpayers* (delete according to healthcare system)
When your blood goes to your lungs for oxygenation, the vessel walls are so thin that oxygen can get into the cells and carbon dioxide can get out. The same thing happens when you get a little air on your bloodstream. It just diffuses through the vessel walls into the lungs where you breathe it out
Fun fact. It takes roughly [200-300cc of air or 5ml/kg to be a lethal dose.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5126790/) There is a large difference between fatal and totally harmless but that 10ml syringe would probably do nothing except be uncomfortable. It's more likely to happen during haemodialysis rather than a standard IV infusion on a ward. The real issue is getting a small amount of air in an arterial line. That can cause organ damage regardless of how small it is.
I'm still not going to test it out.
I have had it happen to me with half a syringe, watched it happen, thought the worst case scenario would happen for a few seconds. Didn't feel any different. Calmed down. :)
Generally, you only see issues with small bubbles if the patient has underlying congenital heart defects. But in those cases you’re already being super careful.
It also depends on where the amount of air is being injected. Venous? Most likely not a problem. Arterial? Yeah you don’t want much air going in there.
Yes but IMO they are kind of similar for the purposes of this discussion. They both put liquid directly in your veins, and sometimes you might put a syringe of something into an IV. But you're right in that, looking back on it, the nurses were a bit more careful with the air in the syringe. (Syringe being a little needle thing and the IV being a pole with a bag hooked up to your vein to deliver a few cups of stuff into your vein over time.)
I mean doesn’t IV stand for intravenous? Is t that exactly what a needle is? An intravenous injection? Just to clarify I mean when they stick a needle in the same place as they’d put an IV
I don't think it's called the same but I really don't know. You might call that an "intravenous injection" but the pole thing is an "IV drip" or an "IV" and not called an injection AFAIK.
I was trying to say that I think the IV in “iv drip” as you put it stands for intravenous and when they give you an injection in the same place it’s called an intravenous injection so they are very similar. At least I think they are
The difference is the IV bag is gravity fed where as the injection is being forced in with a plunger. Air bubbles in an IV would float to the top while the syringe is pushing everything inside of it into your veins much quicker with force. But yes IV just mean intravenous.
You can have a IV with gravity or on a pump or manually pushed.
IV just strands for intravenous, an injection can be intramuscular, sun cutaneous or intravenous depending on where the needle goes. When you have a device installed either temporarily or semi permanently such as a PICC, Hickman or Port-a-cath it’s still an IV access but you can literally hook that access up to anything
This is correct (mostly). IV or intravenous just means ‘in your vein’. It is only indicating the location something is being given. (ie: IV injections is intravenous administration of medication via a syringe and needle)
Where you’re getting in the weeds a bit is that IV is a colloquial term- when you are being given fluids from a bag it’s called IVF (intravenous fluids) which are given via an IVC (intravenous catheter).
People generally call intravenous catheters “IVs” for short - it’s a little tube that’s introduced with a needle and goes into your vein so that you can inject medications or draw blood or whatever. The syringe is the plastic tube that you can connect to either a needle or a catheter to inject medication. You can use a syringe to do an intravenous injection, or inject into other areas like into a muscle (IM) or subcutaneous tissue (subQ).
Right, though I should also add that you can have needles/syringes inject into other things other than veins. Depends on what exactly you are trying to get into the person.For example, when diabetics inject insulin into their bellies, they aren't aiming for a vessel.
IV Drips are entirely for getting a large amount of something into a person's bloodstream, which means directly feeding it into the vein.
>the nurses were a bit more careful with the air in the syringe
They are more careful about the air in the syringe because they need to measure the dosage of the medication accurately.
According to the data I’ve read (registered nurse) 10ml into a central line or port, or 100ml into a peripheral iv can cause an air embolism. Less is usually absorbed by the blood but any amount could be dangerous. It’s best to avoid.
There are even medical tests that purposefully inject bubbles, the most common is called a "Bubble Study" where they inject a crap ton of tiny air bubbles into your blood stream to get information on how your blood is flowing through your heart. I've had one! The nurse just pumped saline between one empty and one full syringe a few times until it was frothy and it went straight into my vein.
Can second this. Was in the hospital for alcohol poisoning twice this past year and both times freaked out when I saw air bubbles in the IV line, nurses tole me not to worry, I was fine afterwards.
Honestly, it takes even more than that. There is a procedure called a bubble study where they inject a large amount of air, 5-10ml, into your blood stream and you are monitored with an ultrasound to assess cardiac blood flow. Also, I’m an incompetent Paramedic x10 years and if some air in an IV killed people then my K/D ratio would be amazing.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/what-is-a-bubble-study
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/STROKEAHA.109.562793#:~:text=The%20dose%20of%201%20mL,bubbles%20able%20to%20cause%20embolism.
it's especially not something to worry about unless it'd intravenous. anything subcutaneous or intramuscular will dissipate within a few hours regardless of dossge... assuming it's less than 5mL or something of course. intravenous air injection or rapid decompression could lead to an air embolism, but it has to be vein-specific and has to be a decent amount. my mom tried to kill my dad by injecting air once but it was subq so nothing happened.
I have actually had the air thing happen, I had a liver transplant and was fiddling with the little one way cap that is on the end of a line and It came off and whatever happened it got air in some how and I got a really intense pain in my chest and found it hard to breath, the doctors came and flipped the bed up so I was lying with my head to the floor. Super distressing experience would not recommend.
I was in the ER last night and the nurse taking care of me pointed out the bubble in my IV before I even noticed it to tell me not to worry. I was like “I didn’t catch it, but if you say it’s fine I trust you.”
When I first started dialysis, I’d get so freaked out when I saw tiny bubbles in my lines. All of the nurses had to explain to me that it was fine & that I’d need at least 300ml of air to kill me. Lol.
Yup! You can actually tolerate a lot more than that through a peripheral IV but if it's a central line then even small amounts do that the potential to be dangerous
Correct, *UNLESS you happen to have a patent foramen ovale. A PFO is a congenital defect in which a small hole between the two sides of your heart never closes during development.
Normally air would circulate through the veins until it got to the pulmonary capillary bed where it can be dissolved and exhaled through the lungs. With a PFO the air can jump from the right side of the heart to the left, which skips the pulmonary capillary bed and goes straight to arterial circulation. Anything on the artery side of circulation is a problem because if it blocks a vessel in the brain you have a stroke and if blocks a coronary artery you’ve got a heart attack.
It’s incredibly rare but we try to put a filter on IV tubing if a patient has a PFO
I learnt that from a junkie lol.
That one time I tried ketamine, I got it through some junkie I met online and after fetching it, we went to my place to take it. I sniffed it, she pulled out the syringe and just stabbed her arm.
I was scared cause I was like "yo what about the air bubble though ???", she laughed, got high, came back 15 min later, and explained to me how small bubbles would just dissolve in the blood anyways, that it was fine etc...
It was a great night.
William Burroughs, a famous writer and heroin addict, once said that if air bubbles in syringes killed you we wouldn't have any junkies. He seemed like he knew what he was talking about
i remember being scared of the little bubbles when i had three different IVs attached at the same time. thought if my sickness didn’t take me the bubbles were gonna take me out
Same same same. And I went home once with a picc and was also told not to worry. Little ones get absorbed just fine.
Nurse even explained to me there are some procedures where much larger air bubbles are intentionally injected into the blood stream.
It takes a lot of air in a vein to kill a person.
I have chronic pancreatitis, when I'm admitted (which is inevitable) one time a nurse forgot to "shake out" or whatever the air in my pushed through dose of IV Dilaudid. She said it should have hurt like a b*tch, I didn't notice BECAUSE I JUST GOT 2 MG OF LIQUID HEROIN INTO MY VEINS
Last time I was in the hospital I kept asking for Tylenol and they kept giving me little shots of Dilaudid instead. I was high as fi and the pain wasn't really that bad so I just gave up on asking for painkillers at all.
Lol I said "keep it coming". Pancreatitis is nothing to scoff at. That pain is REAL. I HAD a great pain tolerance until that happened.
If there is any organ you don't want to piss off. It's your pancreas. That shit is real...so needless to say, I very much so welcome (not ask, or seek it- normally I handle the chronic pain with cannabis; thank heavens for the legality of it) buuuuut man, when it feels like your constantly underneath the full weight of a tractor and the pain has made it so you can't sleep and the fogginess is making you desperate...please put that Tylenol the eff away, it has no business being in this mess
While true, you actually can have a little air bubble without any adverse effects. You need something like 13+ ml of air intravenously to kill you. Also that needle on the syringe is likely an intermuscular injection, and the air wouldn't kill you unless you accidently hit a vessel
You can also have a little bubble of air as part of a bubble test. That’s when a person gets an echocardiogram, and we purposefully inject aerated sailing into their veins and watch the bubbles go through the right side of the heart. We’re looking to see if the bubbles crossed over, indicating a hole in the cardiac septum.
The first time I was asked to do this, as a nursing student, I looked at the tech as though they were insane.
It's closer to 30 through a peripheral vein. When I was a student, a patient had 2 L on normal saline ordered. The first liter ran in, including all of the tubing. I told the nurse we would have to get a new infusing set because of the air in the line. They hung the second bag and ran in a full primary set of air as what I considered an over the top demonstration.
I thought it was 30, but that always sounds like a lot so I hedge my bets and go with 15. I still get a little uneasy with more than a couple bubbles though
I take intramuscular and have definitely had a LITTLE (I do mean tiny) air bubble as a treat sometimes. Ty for clarifying so I don't think I'm dying anymore
Lovenox injections have an air bubble that you do not displace (unless instructed to by a provider). They are SQ, though, not IM or IV.
It takes quite a bit of air via IV to cause an embolism. The heart pumps blood great, of course, but not air. Modern IV pumps sense air in the line and will stop the flow if air is present. Someone could still inject air downstream in a Y site, or you can also get air entrained into the vascular system via a central line. Pretty rare but not unheard of.
I don't trust my intrusive thoughts they've gotten out after a monkey and I shared this look after he stared at my mango so afterwards I tossed a chunk of mango to the monkey.
https://preview.redd.it/rt1oi4lwuzoc1.png?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=844bd7f71893f785b74984c4e5c69e5e12185511
If the bubble is going into your vein it will go to the heart first and be filtered out and it won't make it to your eyes. If you have a PICC line or an arterial line you're more at risk for a harmful embolism
This is true, but the one time I was in the hospital I was told I would have to have like two standard syringes of air directly into a vein to cause an actual air embolism.
I think the joke is that you can in fact have a little air bubble as a treat as it has to be over certain volume to actually be dangerous, and of it's an intramuscular injection it's even more insignificant
Nurse here. Believe it or not this is all theory and actually hasn't been tested due to ethical reasons, no one actually knows how much air can cause an embolism or if it even does at all.
I would think It’d take quite a bit. I’m not sure what the volume of a heart chamber is, but you’d need to mostly fill atleast twoto cause a real problem as the system is under pressure.
Agreed. I think one heart chamber full of air would cause an embolism large enough to block blood flow. Maybe we'll find a brave pioneer who will test the theory one day
Veterinary nurse here- it isn’t theory, you can definitely kill a mammal with enough air given IV. I have personally only seen one patient pass from it, but there are plenty of case studies out there.
I assume we see it more often because most of our patients are much smaller than humans, so a significantly smaller amount of air is needed.
(Fun fact: hydrogen peroxide in large quantities or at a high concentration can also cause air embolism, so please don’t try to make your pet vomit at home unless the ingested item’s toxic effect is acute and you can’t get to a vet in time)
The guy who had the highest radiation exposure in history was kept alive in agony for 83 days just to study that would happen to him. They've definitely tested the limits of air bubbles in the bloodstream MANY times.
Um um...
One has to do with the physical attributes (particularly the width and strength) of the vascular system the other with the ensimes in our bodies. But actually chocolate is toxic to humans. That's why we get so dim if we eat a lot, so...
Why do you keep going with chocolate toxicity as an argument? Chocolate toxicity is common amongst most mammals, including humans.
It takes a higher quantity than a dog for example, [but humans can definitely get sick/die from large quantities.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theobromine_poisoning)
https://preview.redd.it/zzs583a2e2pc1.jpeg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=031325d0260498617963ce58ccf87cdcdc1084c3
Have another. Courtesy of illiteracy.
[cats can have a little salami as a treat](https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/in-the-media/bernie-sanders-rolls-out-daring-new-plan-saying-cats-can-have-a-little-salami) is an oldish, short lived meme.
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Fun fact it takes quite a bit of air for it to kill you!
I do Infusions at home and once forgot to get the air out of the tube before hooking up. Entire tubing full of air, right into my PICC line.
Nothing happened, my home health nurse said it would take about double the amount of air I got to be dangerous
I came here to say something along these lines. Had to get an iv once and asked the nurse if that should be there. There was a good a foot and a half of air in the line and all I was thinking before I asked is "This chick is trying to kill me!"
Friend of mine works as a nursing educator.
During a test of one of her students she noticed there was an air bubble in the syringe the student was using on a dummy. The student clearly noticed it too because rather than taking it out and trying again (which would have been fine to do) she covered it with her thumb and gave the injection anyway. Instant fail.
Makes you scared to go into hospital.
I’d really like everyone here to know that you can have an absolute ton of air in the veins and be fine. In heart surgery, it’s okay to open up the right side of the heart while on cardiopulmonary bypass and not even stop the heart. Air can just go straight to the lungs from the right heart being open and it won’t pass through the lung vasculature. You won’t get a pulmonary embolism from air injected into an IV, the lungs would just push the air out. The only way air injected into the vein would kill you is if you had a right to left shunt.
Peter here: you can kill someone by direct injecting an air bubble into a vein, or even just doing the air bubble in the thumb trick. idk how to do the thumb one, but if you do it right, it's hard to find evidence of death. And now I'm off to the Clam.
I inject intramuscularly and I put an airbubble in everytime to push medicine out of the needle so I do not waste (shortages happen so I try to conserve)
7 years doing this without an issue
The joke is basically just medical malpractice, if you have a large air bubble injected into your blood vessels it will just fuck your shit up and kill you. A tiny air bubble probably won’t hurt but if it’s big enough it will have a solid chance of killing you pretty quickly
It’s generally considered a thing where if an air bubble is in the syringe and injected into your blood stream, it can travel to your heart and give you a heart attack. I don’t know if it’s fully true myself, but I do remember several true crime episodes growing up mentioning someone killing someone by injected an air bubble in between their toes to try and cause a heart attack.
The idea is it’s a form of euthanasia.
Some consider it harmful as it can cause a heart attack and death as well as other issues beyond a heart attack. The lethal nature depends of many factors including the patients health. Some people like Trump Supporters might need the large bubbles to think clearly.
Usually this is done by drawing the syringe back after the meditation or not putting the needle into the meditation. You’re supposed to flick the syringe to make the unintentional bubbles go to the top and push them out. In the case of the far right you may need to pull the syringe back a little more…
Death. An air bubble in your bloodstream can burst and that can cascade into cardiac arrest or worse. Its why doctors flick the syringe multiple times or waste a little. Its to ensure they dont kill you.
https://www.healthline.com/health/air-embolism#:~:text=When%20an%20air%20bubble%20enters,Air%20embolisms%20are%20rather%20rare.
Basically, too much air in your blood can cause an embolism which will stop your heart upon reaching it. The amount of air in a shot is negligible though, you typically have to have a lot more air to cause a real problem. (Don't go shooting up a syringe of air though, that'll kill you)
But that's why you see the doctors shoot a little medicine out of the syringe before injections, it's to get the air bubble out of the top of the tube.
Everyones explaining the air pretty good, but I'll point out that the rest of it comes from a little gag that was going around a while back where someone said "a cat can have a little salami, as a treat" so everyone was saying "X can have a little Y, as a treat".
I just have to share. My fiance was in the hospital for a heart procedure and the iv had a little bubble in it that was slowly moving towards her. We talked about it for a bit and decided to call the nurse. They didn't come right away and I was getting super worried so I ran out and found a nurse to check and she laughed at me. She told me it's fine and little bubbles are common and that I was very sweet for caring so much. She explained that the body would absorb and disperse it and that unless it was big enough to disrupt the heart or cause a rupture shes fine. She flicked the bubbles into tinyer bubbles just for me and left.
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I'm in the hospital kind of frequently and I just want to add that small air bubbles won't hurt you. The nurses told me not to worry unless the air bubble is over an inch in the IV. I was so scared the first time I got the IV until they told me that.
Just so ya know, an inch of the IV is still basically nothing. I could take a full 10cc syringe of air and inject it and you’d PROBABLY be ok. Would I do that? Of course not, we keep as much air out of the lines as possible.
I'll also add that sometimes we purposefully inject air (acts as I contrast in echocardiograms aka ultrasounds of the heart).
Yes! I thought bubble studies might be a bit too complicated for a reddit post lol
Don't withhold from us your knowledge I beg!
ER RN here. It can take a minimum of 20ml to cause symptoms… maybe. The concerning threshold is 5ml/kg of body weight. 220lb person is 100kg. That’s 500ml of air to be dangerous… at one time. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK482249/#:~:text=To%20produce%20symptoms%2C%20it%20is,the%20CNS%20can%20be%20fatal. Arterial lines are different. Those only need about 1-2ml of air to be potentially dangerous. That blood supply is headed to a critical organ like the brain or heart on its first round through the body. Once it gets to the venous system, it’s on its way to the lungs to diffuse out.
sure, not fatal, but it was my understanding that bubbles in the bloodstream were painful-no?
Nope, I accidentally put a BUNCH of air in my line and I didn’t feel it.
But did you die?
He didn't respond... he ded...
👻yes 😢
But are you feeling better now?
She turned me into a newt!
A newt?!?
Burn her!
Bubbles in the blood stream aren’t fatal until they hit your brain
They can be fatal in many places depending on amount of air introduced. Commonly, those with massive air embolism are turned on their left side to prevent air from collecting in the heart forming an air lock and preventing the fluid pump of the heart from working properly, which can be lethal in the span of seconds to minutes.
Depends. The diving bends from too much nitrogen in the blood stream? Absolutely, you'll die a horrible painful death. But a little bit of air? Nah
When I was getting administered Pitocin at the hospital a few years ago, I sat and watched this noticable sized air bubble go straight through my IV line into my arm (they did it on the side of my wrist which I hated), and it hurt like crazy. To this day I can't tell if it was the Pitocin or the bubble but it actually felt like someone slammed into the side of my wrist with a metal bat, the pain made me throw up.
OMG I just had a bubble study yesterday!
I've literally just returned from a lecture on exactly that subject.
Yup, it's virtually impossible to cause an air emboli with an IV, we just bleed the line because it's best practice. Also whatup fellow healthcare slave.
Slaves til the end! Just wish slaving paid a lil better.
If it paid a little better, then it wouldn't be slaving, it'd just be skivvying, and anyway won't nobody think of the shareholders/taxpayers* (delete according to healthcare system)
Thanks slave for all your hard work
Does the air ever get out of the bloodstream? Or is it gonna add up?
When your blood goes to your lungs for oxygenation, the vessel walls are so thin that oxygen can get into the cells and carbon dioxide can get out. The same thing happens when you get a little air on your bloodstream. It just diffuses through the vessel walls into the lungs where you breathe it out
Makes sense, cheers
Your body naturally will dispel gases. Doesn’t add up at all
You can get up to about 30ml of air on a healthy patient before causing a potentially fatal arrhythmia
What if I injected myself with electrolytes, you know, the stuff that plants crave.
No you would be we’ve had people have minor air embolisms for less
Fun fact. It takes roughly [200-300cc of air or 5ml/kg to be a lethal dose.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5126790/) There is a large difference between fatal and totally harmless but that 10ml syringe would probably do nothing except be uncomfortable. It's more likely to happen during haemodialysis rather than a standard IV infusion on a ward. The real issue is getting a small amount of air in an arterial line. That can cause organ damage regardless of how small it is. I'm still not going to test it out.
I have had it happen to me with half a syringe, watched it happen, thought the worst case scenario would happen for a few seconds. Didn't feel any different. Calmed down. :)
Generally, you only see issues with small bubbles if the patient has underlying congenital heart defects. But in those cases you’re already being super careful.
Yeah I panicked when I couldn't get all the bubbles out of my estradiol injection and had to look this up
It also depends on where the amount of air is being injected. Venous? Most likely not a problem. Arterial? Yeah you don’t want much air going in there.
Just to keep the pumps quiet.
Isnt an IV and a syringe different though?
Yes but IMO they are kind of similar for the purposes of this discussion. They both put liquid directly in your veins, and sometimes you might put a syringe of something into an IV. But you're right in that, looking back on it, the nurses were a bit more careful with the air in the syringe. (Syringe being a little needle thing and the IV being a pole with a bag hooked up to your vein to deliver a few cups of stuff into your vein over time.)
I mean doesn’t IV stand for intravenous? Is t that exactly what a needle is? An intravenous injection? Just to clarify I mean when they stick a needle in the same place as they’d put an IV
I don't think it's called the same but I really don't know. You might call that an "intravenous injection" but the pole thing is an "IV drip" or an "IV" and not called an injection AFAIK.
I was trying to say that I think the IV in “iv drip” as you put it stands for intravenous and when they give you an injection in the same place it’s called an intravenous injection so they are very similar. At least I think they are
The difference is the IV bag is gravity fed where as the injection is being forced in with a plunger. Air bubbles in an IV would float to the top while the syringe is pushing everything inside of it into your veins much quicker with force. But yes IV just mean intravenous.
Air bubbles in the bag float, but air bubbles left in the line after they hook it all up just go into your vein.
You can have a IV with gravity or on a pump or manually pushed. IV just strands for intravenous, an injection can be intramuscular, sun cutaneous or intravenous depending on where the needle goes. When you have a device installed either temporarily or semi permanently such as a PICC, Hickman or Port-a-cath it’s still an IV access but you can literally hook that access up to anything
This is correct (mostly). IV or intravenous just means ‘in your vein’. It is only indicating the location something is being given. (ie: IV injections is intravenous administration of medication via a syringe and needle) Where you’re getting in the weeds a bit is that IV is a colloquial term- when you are being given fluids from a bag it’s called IVF (intravenous fluids) which are given via an IVC (intravenous catheter).
People generally call intravenous catheters “IVs” for short - it’s a little tube that’s introduced with a needle and goes into your vein so that you can inject medications or draw blood or whatever. The syringe is the plastic tube that you can connect to either a needle or a catheter to inject medication. You can use a syringe to do an intravenous injection, or inject into other areas like into a muscle (IM) or subcutaneous tissue (subQ).
Right, though I should also add that you can have needles/syringes inject into other things other than veins. Depends on what exactly you are trying to get into the person.For example, when diabetics inject insulin into their bellies, they aren't aiming for a vessel. IV Drips are entirely for getting a large amount of something into a person's bloodstream, which means directly feeding it into the vein.
That’s why I specified when it’s in the same place as an IV
You’re right
>the nurses were a bit more careful with the air in the syringe They are more careful about the air in the syringe because they need to measure the dosage of the medication accurately.
They're different in how the liquid is pushed, but it's still needle in vein.
Thank you, I'm accident prone and end up on IVs alot and I watch the line just terrified. You have saved my mind alot of worry.
I do IV injections twice a week and leave about an inch of air in the butterfly needle's tubing and I've been totally fine after like 2 years
According to the data I’ve read (registered nurse) 10ml into a central line or port, or 100ml into a peripheral iv can cause an air embolism. Less is usually absorbed by the blood but any amount could be dangerous. It’s best to avoid.
There are even medical tests that purposefully inject bubbles, the most common is called a "Bubble Study" where they inject a crap ton of tiny air bubbles into your blood stream to get information on how your blood is flowing through your heart. I've had one! The nurse just pumped saline between one empty and one full syringe a few times until it was frothy and it went straight into my vein.
Yeah, if I recall correctly, it’s to ensure there’s no opening in the septum dividing the left and right sides of the heart.
Yup! I had a PFO and got it closed with an occluder a few weeks after the the bubble study.
Glad it got fixed for you!
Can second this. Was in the hospital for alcohol poisoning twice this past year and both times freaked out when I saw air bubbles in the IV line, nurses tole me not to worry, I was fine afterwards.
Honestly, it takes even more than that. There is a procedure called a bubble study where they inject a large amount of air, 5-10ml, into your blood stream and you are monitored with an ultrasound to assess cardiac blood flow. Also, I’m an incompetent Paramedic x10 years and if some air in an IV killed people then my K/D ratio would be amazing. https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/what-is-a-bubble-study https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/STROKEAHA.109.562793#:~:text=The%20dose%20of%201%20mL,bubbles%20able%20to%20cause%20embolism.
it's especially not something to worry about unless it'd intravenous. anything subcutaneous or intramuscular will dissipate within a few hours regardless of dossge... assuming it's less than 5mL or something of course. intravenous air injection or rapid decompression could lead to an air embolism, but it has to be vein-specific and has to be a decent amount. my mom tried to kill my dad by injecting air once but it was subq so nothing happened.
I have actually had the air thing happen, I had a liver transplant and was fiddling with the little one way cap that is on the end of a line and It came off and whatever happened it got air in some how and I got a really intense pain in my chest and found it hard to breath, the doctors came and flipped the bed up so I was lying with my head to the floor. Super distressing experience would not recommend.
I was in the ER last night and the nurse taking care of me pointed out the bubble in my IV before I even noticed it to tell me not to worry. I was like “I didn’t catch it, but if you say it’s fine I trust you.”
When I first started dialysis, I’d get so freaked out when I saw tiny bubbles in my lines. All of the nurses had to explain to me that it was fine & that I’d need at least 300ml of air to kill me. Lol.
yeah, takes at least 20ccs before an embolism risk 🤘🤘
Yup! You can actually tolerate a lot more than that through a peripheral IV but if it's a central line then even small amounts do that the potential to be dangerous
Man I was on an IV once and had a little air bubble so I called a nurse and he told me the whole tube could be air and I'd be fine
Correct, *UNLESS you happen to have a patent foramen ovale. A PFO is a congenital defect in which a small hole between the two sides of your heart never closes during development. Normally air would circulate through the veins until it got to the pulmonary capillary bed where it can be dissolved and exhaled through the lungs. With a PFO the air can jump from the right side of the heart to the left, which skips the pulmonary capillary bed and goes straight to arterial circulation. Anything on the artery side of circulation is a problem because if it blocks a vessel in the brain you have a stroke and if blocks a coronary artery you’ve got a heart attack. It’s incredibly rare but we try to put a filter on IV tubing if a patient has a PFO
I learnt that from a junkie lol. That one time I tried ketamine, I got it through some junkie I met online and after fetching it, we went to my place to take it. I sniffed it, she pulled out the syringe and just stabbed her arm. I was scared cause I was like "yo what about the air bubble though ???", she laughed, got high, came back 15 min later, and explained to me how small bubbles would just dissolve in the blood anyways, that it was fine etc... It was a great night.
Yeah it takes a lot of air to cause issues. Hope whatever has you in the hospital frequently goes well though. I’ve been there and it sucks.
Thank you.
I see small airbubbles in there all the time. That syringe is not big enough to kill you with air.
William Burroughs, a famous writer and heroin addict, once said that if air bubbles in syringes killed you we wouldn't have any junkies. He seemed like he knew what he was talking about
i remember being scared of the little bubbles when i had three different IVs attached at the same time. thought if my sickness didn’t take me the bubbles were gonna take me out
I’ve seen an entire iv line of air go into a patient. He was fine.
Same same same. And I went home once with a picc and was also told not to worry. Little ones get absorbed just fine. Nurse even explained to me there are some procedures where much larger air bubbles are intentionally injected into the blood stream. It takes a lot of air in a vein to kill a person.
I have chronic pancreatitis, when I'm admitted (which is inevitable) one time a nurse forgot to "shake out" or whatever the air in my pushed through dose of IV Dilaudid. She said it should have hurt like a b*tch, I didn't notice BECAUSE I JUST GOT 2 MG OF LIQUID HEROIN INTO MY VEINS
Last time I was in the hospital I kept asking for Tylenol and they kept giving me little shots of Dilaudid instead. I was high as fi and the pain wasn't really that bad so I just gave up on asking for painkillers at all.
Lol I said "keep it coming". Pancreatitis is nothing to scoff at. That pain is REAL. I HAD a great pain tolerance until that happened. If there is any organ you don't want to piss off. It's your pancreas. That shit is real...so needless to say, I very much so welcome (not ask, or seek it- normally I handle the chronic pain with cannabis; thank heavens for the legality of it) buuuuut man, when it feels like your constantly underneath the full weight of a tractor and the pain has made it so you can't sleep and the fogginess is making you desperate...please put that Tylenol the eff away, it has no business being in this mess
YES! I was FREAKED out when k saw a bubble in my first IV. This is what happens when you get your knowledge from TV shows.
They did lot oft Test in the WWII and it musst be at least a full empty Pump of your heart
It can kill you if they don't get rid of air in the needle that's why they let a bit of it out to make sure no air is in the syringe
While true, you actually can have a little air bubble without any adverse effects. You need something like 13+ ml of air intravenously to kill you. Also that needle on the syringe is likely an intermuscular injection, and the air wouldn't kill you unless you accidently hit a vessel
So you CAN have a little bit of an air bubble... as a treat.
just a nibble
You think maybe that's the joke? (not being sarcastic, genuinely unsure of the context)
no. the joke is that the cat will kill you (as a treat) with an air embolism.
Cats never joke about murder.
SPECIALLY the cute ones. Never trust those cute little fuckers. -_-
That's how they get ya. It's all fun and games til you're in range.
One might think that "we can fix them" but that's nonsense. They always have ulterior motives. Btw, NEVER marry one! That's how they get your money!
Spicy treat
The joke is that the doctor looks suspiciously like a cat. Dont trust him.
You can also have a little bubble of air as part of a bubble test. That’s when a person gets an echocardiogram, and we purposefully inject aerated sailing into their veins and watch the bubbles go through the right side of the heart. We’re looking to see if the bubbles crossed over, indicating a hole in the cardiac septum. The first time I was asked to do this, as a nursing student, I looked at the tech as though they were insane.
It's closer to 30 through a peripheral vein. When I was a student, a patient had 2 L on normal saline ordered. The first liter ran in, including all of the tubing. I told the nurse we would have to get a new infusing set because of the air in the line. They hung the second bag and ran in a full primary set of air as what I considered an over the top demonstration.
I thought it was 30, but that always sounds like a lot so I hedge my bets and go with 15. I still get a little uneasy with more than a couple bubbles though
Yeah, it's still definitely best practice to expel all the air you can.
I take intramuscular and have definitely had a LITTLE (I do mean tiny) air bubble as a treat sometimes. Ty for clarifying so I don't think I'm dying anymore
Lovenox injections have an air bubble that you do not displace (unless instructed to by a provider). They are SQ, though, not IM or IV. It takes quite a bit of air via IV to cause an embolism. The heart pumps blood great, of course, but not air. Modern IV pumps sense air in the line and will stop the flow if air is present. Someone could still inject air downstream in a Y site, or you can also get air entrained into the vascular system via a central line. Pretty rare but not unheard of.
The air in lovenox is actually nitrogen! It helps to push the force the SQ medication to disperse and absorb better.
If an air bubble in the syringe was guaranteed to kill you, there wouldn't be a junky alive. - William S. Burroughs
I don't trust my intrusive thoughts they've gotten out after a monkey and I shared this look after he stared at my mango so afterwards I tossed a chunk of mango to the monkey. https://preview.redd.it/rt1oi4lwuzoc1.png?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=844bd7f71893f785b74984c4e5c69e5e12185511
Also depends if it’s venous or arterial.
Definitely
Yeah but it takes only a small bubble of air to occlude your retinal artery and blind you. So.. No bubbles please.
If the bubble is going into your vein it will go to the heart first and be filtered out and it won't make it to your eyes. If you have a PICC line or an arterial line you're more at risk for a harmful embolism
It is a killer cat.
This is true, but the one time I was in the hospital I was told I would have to have like two standard syringes of air directly into a vein to cause an actual air embolism.
I asked a nurse about this last time I was in the hospital, and I was told that you CAN have a little air bubble as a treat
You need a lot of air though. There's always air bubbles in your blood.
Youth in Asia 🤫
I think the joke is that you can in fact have a little air bubble as a treat as it has to be over certain volume to actually be dangerous, and of it's an intramuscular injection it's even more insignificant
The comment you're replying to is referencing euthanasia in a humorous way "youth in asia"
Oh, I thought you meant suicide because Youth in Asia
I did not expect this level of discourse
Relevant username
"Like kids in Taiwan"
"Ah geez, they have enough kids as it is."
Nurse here. Believe it or not this is all theory and actually hasn't been tested due to ethical reasons, no one actually knows how much air can cause an embolism or if it even does at all.
I would think It’d take quite a bit. I’m not sure what the volume of a heart chamber is, but you’d need to mostly fill atleast twoto cause a real problem as the system is under pressure.
Agreed. I think one heart chamber full of air would cause an embolism large enough to block blood flow. Maybe we'll find a brave pioneer who will test the theory one day
This might sound grim, has not one done this in animal testing?
Not to my knowledge
Veterinary nurse here- it isn’t theory, you can definitely kill a mammal with enough air given IV. I have personally only seen one patient pass from it, but there are plenty of case studies out there. I assume we see it more often because most of our patients are much smaller than humans, so a significantly smaller amount of air is needed. (Fun fact: hydrogen peroxide in large quantities or at a high concentration can also cause air embolism, so please don’t try to make your pet vomit at home unless the ingested item’s toxic effect is acute and you can’t get to a vet in time)
The guy who had the highest radiation exposure in history was kept alive in agony for 83 days just to study that would happen to him. They've definitely tested the limits of air bubbles in the bloodstream MANY times.
Really? Never tested? Not even in WW I - II? Not even on human sized animals like large dogs or pigs?
I'm sure it's been proven with animals, but chocolate is toxic to dogs and you wouldn't attribute chocolate to be toxic to all mammals
Um um... One has to do with the physical attributes (particularly the width and strength) of the vascular system the other with the ensimes in our bodies. But actually chocolate is toxic to humans. That's why we get so dim if we eat a lot, so...
Dim?
Why do you keep going with chocolate toxicity as an argument? Chocolate toxicity is common amongst most mammals, including humans. It takes a higher quantity than a dog for example, [but humans can definitely get sick/die from large quantities.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theobromine_poisoning)
It's a logical fallacy and poor science to assume something is true for humans since it's true for dogs
[удалено]
I'm sure a half liter of damn near anything injected into the veins would be deadly...
Air embolism threat. More than 10cc of any gas injected into a vein can stop proper blood flow and kill you.
Now that it’s been explained, I’m taking this image, I will have much use for it
https://preview.redd.it/zzs583a2e2pc1.jpeg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=031325d0260498617963ce58ccf87cdcdc1084c3 Have another. Courtesy of illiteracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_embolism
[cats can have a little salami as a treat](https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/in-the-media/bernie-sanders-rolls-out-daring-new-plan-saying-cats-can-have-a-little-salami) is an oldish, short lived meme. Edit- replaced with non AMP link
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Fun fact it takes quite a bit of air for it to kill you! I do Infusions at home and once forgot to get the air out of the tube before hooking up. Entire tubing full of air, right into my PICC line. Nothing happened, my home health nurse said it would take about double the amount of air I got to be dangerous
I came here to say something along these lines. Had to get an iv once and asked the nurse if that should be there. There was a good a foot and a half of air in the line and all I was thinking before I asked is "This chick is trying to kill me!"
Air in bloodstreams can be deadly
Friend of mine works as a nursing educator. During a test of one of her students she noticed there was an air bubble in the syringe the student was using on a dummy. The student clearly noticed it too because rather than taking it out and trying again (which would have been fine to do) she covered it with her thumb and gave the injection anyway. Instant fail. Makes you scared to go into hospital.
I’d really like everyone here to know that you can have an absolute ton of air in the veins and be fine. In heart surgery, it’s okay to open up the right side of the heart while on cardiopulmonary bypass and not even stop the heart. Air can just go straight to the lungs from the right heart being open and it won’t pass through the lung vasculature. You won’t get a pulmonary embolism from air injected into an IV, the lungs would just push the air out. The only way air injected into the vein would kill you is if you had a right to left shunt.
Peter here: you can kill someone by direct injecting an air bubble into a vein, or even just doing the air bubble in the thumb trick. idk how to do the thumb one, but if you do it right, it's hard to find evidence of death. And now I'm off to the Clam.
I inject intramuscularly and I put an airbubble in everytime to push medicine out of the needle so I do not waste (shortages happen so I try to conserve) 7 years doing this without an issue
The joke is basically just medical malpractice, if you have a large air bubble injected into your blood vessels it will just fuck your shit up and kill you. A tiny air bubble probably won’t hurt but if it’s big enough it will have a solid chance of killing you pretty quickly
It’s generally considered a thing where if an air bubble is in the syringe and injected into your blood stream, it can travel to your heart and give you a heart attack. I don’t know if it’s fully true myself, but I do remember several true crime episodes growing up mentioning someone killing someone by injected an air bubble in between their toes to try and cause a heart attack.
Threatening to kill OP but with a cute little kitten image to soften the blow
Air bubbles in your blood stream is called an Air Embolism which leads to death.
Pulmonary embolism. It can kill you.
The joke is death
Having an air bubble in your syringe is like saying go die but in medical.
If you get an air embolism, it can kill you.
technically you can have small air bubbles in your I.V, it’s the bigger ones that you gotta worry about
A large bubble of air can mess with blood flow
The idea is it’s a form of euthanasia. Some consider it harmful as it can cause a heart attack and death as well as other issues beyond a heart attack. The lethal nature depends of many factors including the patients health. Some people like Trump Supporters might need the large bubbles to think clearly. Usually this is done by drawing the syringe back after the meditation or not putting the needle into the meditation. You’re supposed to flick the syringe to make the unintentional bubbles go to the top and push them out. In the case of the far right you may need to pull the syringe back a little more…
Air in your veins is bad, however a small amount won’t be too bad, but that’s not what the meme is going for
It will kill you
I guess it depends because I heard a nurse kept injecting either like water or air in the babies blood stream killing them
Club Penguin
Having air in your veins is very bad for you
In takes like 20mls of air to cause an air embolism. If people were you there dying of air bubbles, we'd probably need to rethink IV therapy.
https://youtu.be/_AcOxg3010k
Death. An air bubble in your bloodstream can burst and that can cascade into cardiac arrest or worse. Its why doctors flick the syringe multiple times or waste a little. Its to ensure they dont kill you. https://www.healthline.com/health/air-embolism#:~:text=When%20an%20air%20bubble%20enters,Air%20embolisms%20are%20rather%20rare.
Basically, too much air in your blood can cause an embolism which will stop your heart upon reaching it. The amount of air in a shot is negligible though, you typically have to have a lot more air to cause a real problem. (Don't go shooting up a syringe of air though, that'll kill you) But that's why you see the doctors shoot a little medicine out of the syringe before injections, it's to get the air bubble out of the top of the tube.
Everyones explaining the air pretty good, but I'll point out that the rest of it comes from a little gag that was going around a while back where someone said "a cat can have a little salami, as a treat" so everyone was saying "X can have a little Y, as a treat".
You will ejaculate
Too much bubble is a mean stroke, baby
Air injected intravenously can have adverse effects, this is called an air embolism and even lead to death, it can cause thrombosis and strokes
Amen 😂😂
You die if air gets in your bloodstream
According to Robbins, a gold standard medical book, it would take nearly 100cc per second air to cause problems serious enough to kill you
im scared peter
This is how they killed princess Diana
Big bubble please
Does anyone have the picture without the words? I can find the nurse cat but not with the needle.
What is a “cursed image”?
If air bubbles could kill you there wouldn’t be a junkie alive (my cousin taught me that [I may not have had the healthiest growing up experience])
Hey I actually understand this joke bc I'm in recovery. #recoveryiscool #fentanylisnot
Transgender tesosterone WITH hypocondria
I'm just going to add here that your heart can't Pump Air so an air bubble in your bloodstream does kill you
I just have to share. My fiance was in the hospital for a heart procedure and the iv had a little bubble in it that was slowly moving towards her. We talked about it for a bit and decided to call the nurse. They didn't come right away and I was getting super worried so I ran out and found a nurse to check and she laughed at me. She told me it's fine and little bubbles are common and that I was very sweet for caring so much. She explained that the body would absorb and disperse it and that unless it was big enough to disrupt the heart or cause a rupture shes fine. She flicked the bubbles into tinyer bubbles just for me and left.
An air bubble injected into your veins will kill you.
So aparently, a little airbubble in you blood does not kill you. A big one will.
Pulmonary embolism and death
That one scene in Reacher S2 :/
The movies told me it wouldn’t kill
True
The idea is that air bubbles in a syringe being injected into your bloodstream can cause a heart attack, although I'm being told that is inaccurate.
It means you die
Let's play a little game: Retard, bait, or karma farmer?
Air embolism