So first, a disclaimer – I’m not a doctor, and I’m not offering you any medical advice. Anything that I do is only because of my training and experience, and your background may not qualify you for some of the things I suggest here. Don’t do anything stupid.
That said, I have a small human who has a severe allergy issue, and as a result, is prescribed epinephrine. Most of the time, the best way to administer this (potentially life-saving) drug is an autoinjector, which is a device that has the syringe and needle contained inside along with a spring, and administers the dose automatically when pressed into the patient’s thigh.
One example is the EpiPen (which is pretty well known):
Another recently revived product is the Auvi-Q, which not only is an autoinjector but also talks you through the process, step-by-step:
Either of these products are far more appropriate for a layperson without medical training than what I do, I just want to make that clear.
That being said, in that little zip bag at the top of the post from ITS Tactical (their nylon rocks, by the way), I have a slightly different set of items to administer epinephrine.
Inside the hard plastic medicine vial are those three items. The filter needle is important, because in order to open the ampoule, you actually break the top 1/3 of the ampoule off. This creates potential to contaminate the liquid inside with tiny fragments of glass. There’s a good, succinct explanation available here if you’re curious.
The reason this set-up isn’t for the layperson is as follows: not only do you have to open the ampoule, draw up the (correct amount of) medicine, and then switch to an administration needle, you have to do all of this relatively quickly, and while your patient (in most cases a loved one) is in medical distress.
For someone who regularly works with this stuff, this configuration makes a lot of sense, and is a significant cost savings over the autoinjectors profiled above. For someone without this experience, the extra cost (which can be defrayed with discount cards, etc) of the autoinjector is well worth it.
The other advantage for me is that I get to have 1mg of epinephrine available for dosing – with the usual pediatric dose of epinephrine, I’d have a little over 6 doses worth on hand. For an adult, I’ve got 3 immediately available repeat doses. Both of these beat the single dose you have immediately to hand with an autoinjector (yes there are ways to get a second dose out of an EpiPen, no it’s not quick).
That’s all I’ve got for today, drop any questions or comments over on the contact page – thanks!
-T