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Bigger Butts Need Longer Needles for Injections
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Study finds many patients fail to receive a full
drug dosage.
From Reuters
November 28, 2005, 5:59 PM EST
CHICAGO -- Fatter rear ends are causing many drug
injections to miss their mark, requiring longer
needles to reach buttock muscle, researchers said
today.
Standard-sized needles failed to reach the buttock> muscle in 23 out of 25 women whose rears were
examined after what was supposed to be an
intramuscular injection of a drug.
Two-thirds of the 50 patients in the study did not
receive the full dosage of the drug, which instead
lodged in the fat tissue of their buttocks,
researchers from The Adelaide and Meath Hospital in
Dublin said in a presentation to the annual meeting
of the Radiological Society of North America.
Besides patients receiving less than the correct
drug dosage, medications that remain lodged in fat
can cause infection or irritation, researchers
Victoria Chan said.
"There is no question that obesity is the underlying
cause. We have identified a new problem related, in
part, to the increasing amount of fat in patients'
buttocks," Chan said.
"The amount of fat tissue overlying the muscles
exceeds the length of the needles commonly used for
these injections," she said.
The 25 men and 25 women studied at the Irish
hospital ranged in age from 21 to 87.
The buttocks are a good place for intramuscular
injections because there are relatively few major
blood vessels, nerves and bones that can be damaged
by a needle. Plentiful smaller blood vessels found
in muscle carry the drug to the rest of the body,
while fat tissue contains relatively few blood
vessels.
Obesity affects more than 300 million people
worldwide and is based on a measure of height versus
weight that produces a body mass index above 30. An
estimated 65 percent of U.S. adults are overweight
or obese
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