Injection site infection-hospitalised

it all works. just get 70%alc swabs, doesnt matter if cotton, individually packaged disposables, or soaked paper wipes
I already use the individually packed ones. I'm not the OP. Was just thinking a pack of cotton you keep touching is less sterile, but I supposed that's irrelevant since the alcohol kills any issues anyway.
 
This post had me so paranoid and tripped my OCD that badly I literally threw out two drawn syringes before finally being happy with the 3rd one.

I think I swabbed the area 7 times. Fuck.
 
Most likely your cruddy practice of not using alcohol to sterilize or maybe your gear got contaminated from not swabbing the top with alcohol. Probably a combo who knows. If your worried about the gear send off a sealed vial to Jano for sterility I did with some and both came back positive for fungus/mold.
 
If you have already injected from that vial and nothing happened then its not the gear. The infection came from outside the body and vial. You wont be able to pinpoint it. I have been injecting without using alcohol to wipe the vials or my skin for 15+ years...not a single infection. Thats not saying it cant happen. Infections in hospitals that sterilize everything still happen and happen alot. All you can do moving forward is do your best to keep things sterile.

Funny, I've also been injecting 15+ years, can't think of the last time I used an alcohol wipe.
 
Funny, I've also been injecting 15+ years, can't think of the last time I used an alcohol wipe.
Geez if you can't do basic antibacterial cleanliness before you inject with needles I can imagine how you live , do you brush your teeth lol , wiping before injection with alcohol is like basic injection practices 101 , I guess you're lucky you haven't gotten an infection, you better thank God or whoever you believe in ..
 
I want to share the story of Staphylococcus epidermidis.

This species is a bro. It's all over the skin, like the name suggests. It prevents colonization by other organisms, helps maintain healthy skin chemistry, and even trains the human immune response. Like almost all microbes that have some health effect, most strains are neutral (or beneficial) while a tiny minority has the potential to cause problems. In fact, it's so benign that people with central venous catheters or PICC lines frequently have asymptomatic bacteremia -- a silent Staph epi population in the blood that's not doing a darn bit of harm.

Still, it's the second leading cause of injection site infections. Why?

There's a fuckton of it, and it's everywhere. Ten thousand to ten million cells per square cm, all over your skin. If you wash and swab with alcohol or iodine, you drop the concentration but it's never zero. All of us here have introduced this into organisms IM or subq a gang of times, but the statistics are on our side. They're on our side unless you routinely make bad bets, that is.

The upshot: you cannot avoid introducing bacteria to yourself, you can only stack the deck in your favor. Wash, swab, keep needles covered before use, use clean ones, etc. This is devastatingly easy to do and being this fucking lazy can kill you.

This isn't even harm reduction 101, it's that class they make kids take the summer before 101 because they get word from the last teacher that you drool a lot.
 
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