How do you give diluted epinephrine (1:10000) through an injector needle?

[Aquarium2006]

It typically takes 1.5ml of fluid (epi) to prime the endo injector needle, right? So, in injecting epi for a bleed, doesn't 1.5ml of NS follow the total injection of the epi syringe to deliver the full 1mg of epi? How do you keep track of how much epi you give? Just want to clarify.

[getoverit, BSN, RN, EMT-P]

The needles we use take about 0.7cc to prime. We don't "push" the epi with saline, epinephrine is the only thing going through the needle. We have 10cc of 1:10,000 and we inject until the MD tells us to stop. We determine how much epi is left in the syringe, account for the 0.7cc remaining in the needle tubing, subtract from 10cc and that's how we calculate the amount of epi.

We rarely ever give a full mg of epinephrine to a single site for a bleed. Often I give between 0.3-0.5mg to a bleeding site.

Hope that helps.

[I<3Endo]

I agree w/the above post. Only in a few circumstances have I had to give more than the 1 mg. In those situations they were pretty bad bleeds & we were moving fast. During intervals in injecting I went ahead & just swapped out syringes when it was nearing the last couple cc's. When I was done I just added the total given of the 2 & documented it.