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does dead space actually matter or is it forum lore at this point

Correction Clean Column ×8 Slow Clap ×1 Receipts ×3

does dead space actually matter or is it forum lore at this point. If this has been answered properly somewhere, link me and I will delete.

If your calculation produces a fraction of a unit, the concentration is wrong for your dose. Change the water volume until the numbers land on whole units.

Bacteriostatic water contains benzyl alcohol as a preservative, which is what makes repeated entry into the same vial reasonable. Plain sterile water has no preservative.

The lyophilised cake displaces a small volume, so the true concentration is very slightly lower than the arithmetic suggests. It is a fraction of a percent and it is dwarfed by fill tolerance.

Tell me where this is wrong. That is the useful part of posting it.

6,362 up / 1,201 down84% upvoted61 commentsid 1g7sb411 Sep 2023

61 comments

30 in this archive, depth 6

best — the order this archive was captured in

u/units_not_mgMOD690 points·2 years ago

Reminder: this board does maths, not dosing. Nobody here tells another member what amount to take.

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u/iman_falk205 points·2 years ago

swirl, never shake

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[removed]151 points·2 years ago

[removed by moderator]

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u/ahmed_rasmussen93 points·2 years ago

Yes, and the dead-space point is worth repeating: it is small, it is real, and it is the same for every draw.

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u/georgi_adebayo493 points·2 years ago

Research-use-only material is not approved for human use, so treat everything in this thread as arithmetic about solutions rather than instructions for a person.

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u/ledger_modmod · vetting322 points·2 years ago

Adding more water does not change how much peptide is in the vial. It changes the concentration, which changes the volume you draw for the same amount. That is the entire relationship.

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u/quarter_dose_queenOPlow and slow121 points·2 years ago

Correcting myself above: I wrote the concentration the wrong way up. Mass over volume, not volume over mass.

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u/sleep_apnea_sam301 points·2 years ago

Spent 18 weeks confused about this until somebody drew the table for me. 20mg, 2mL, 10mg/mL, 5mg is 50 units. That is the whole thing.

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u/britta_nakamura166 points·2 years ago

Right — the volume you add is the only variable you control here, and the cake does not change it meaningfully.

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u/ines_lindqvist62 points·2 years ago

Pushback on the syringe advice: a U-100 barrel reads units of volume. Calling them "doses" is how the confusion starts.

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u/yusuf_nakamura169 points·2 years ago

Yes. Writing 5mg/mL on the vial takes four seconds and removes the entire class of error this board exists to fix.

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u/tuva_kirchner80 points·2 years ago

Correction: that gives 10 units, not what you have written. 30mg into 3mL is 10mg/mL and the division follows from there.

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u/yusuf_nakamura25 points·2 years ago

label the vial with the date as well as the concentration

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u/viktor_kirchner19 points·2 years ago

the powder cake sits at the bottom, the volume you add is the volume that counts

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u/sock_puppet_spotter142 points·2 years ago

The dead space question sent me down a rabbit hole for a week. It is a fraction of a unit and it is the same every draw.

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u/anjali_tamm72 points·2 years ago

do the arithmetic before you reconstitute, not while holding a syringe

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u/spain_receta101 points·2 years ago

How many mg in the vial and how many mL are you adding?

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u/quarter_dose_queenOPlow and slow40 points·2 years ago

Small fix — a U-100 syringe is 100 units per mL. If yours is marked differently it is not U-100 and the whole calculation changes.

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u/oskar_ibarra11 points·2 years ago·edited

Cosigning the round-number approach. Reconstituting to something awkward is how you end up drawing 27.5 units at six in the morning.

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u/adaeze_cabrera13 points·2 years ago

This. Showing the working is the fastest way for somebody else to spot the mistake.

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u/gradient_goblin10 points·2 years ago

units are a volume on a U-100 syringe, not a dose

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u/ilias_cabrera7 points·2 years ago

bacteriostatic water has the preservative, sterile water does not

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u/emil_wojcik6 points·2 years ago

5mg into 2mL is 2.5mg/mL, and 1.5mg of that is 60 units

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u/quarter_dose_queenOPlow and slow8 points·2 years ago

That is sterile water, not bacteriostatic. Same appearance, different product, and it matters for a multi-draw vial.

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u/honest_syringe_maybe42 points·2 years ago

Agreed on the swirl. There is no reason to shake it and a good reason not to.

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u/saskia_mwangi24 points·2 years ago

Agreed — units are volume. Once that lands, the rest of the arithmetic is one division.

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u/julia_erdogan13 points·2 years ago

Same. I got this wrong once, caught it because the units looked absurd, and have written on every vial since.

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u/ilias_cabrera6 points·2 years ago

reconstituting at a round concentration makes every later dose easy

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u/viktor_erdogan43 points·2 years ago

if the maths gives you a fraction of a unit, change the concentration

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u/yusuf_achebe31 points·2 years ago

Reconstituted at 1mL when I meant to use a different volume. Caught it because the units looked wrong on the barrel. Now I write 20mg/mL on the glass before I put the cap back.

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About c/reconstitution

The arithmetic and the technique. Bacteriostatic versus sterile water, reconstitution volume as a concentration choice, converting mg/mL into insulin-syringe units, dead space, swirl-not-shake, stopper coring, and how long a reconstituted vial is actually good for. Math errors get corrected fast and politely.

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