Diabetes IV Gear - Care and Efficient, Intelligent Use

If your using your pen on a regular basis, I'd recommend using a mixture of alcohol 50%, 10% glycerine, and 40% clean water, for regular users, who take insulin daily or within 3 or 4 days and the unit is kept refrigerated - and then topping up the little hole in the needle cap, every time.

Plain alcohol (methylated spirits) is dirt cheap and kills everything.

The purpose of the glycerine (BP Grade if you can get it) is to lubricate the rubber piston in the syringe - so your syringe can last many, many, refills. Again good care makes for a great deal of longevity.

However if your in a place where regular insulin is needed, and syringes are plentiful, then just use plain alcohol and if you can use glycerine (supermarket / food grade) to lubricate the rubber piston with each refill of the syringe - will be fine.

This way only 2 or so drops of antiseptic solution is needed to refill the needle cap, to keep the whole needle sterile - and the insulin in the needle, completely sterile.

But this is not a LONG TERM solution - as in it can be used indefinitly - as long as you top up the needle cap regularly - like after every use, or at least daily. But I mean it's not a long term solution in the sense that you top the needle cap up with pure alcohol or an alcohol based solution and to then leave the unused pen sitting around for days or weeks, as the solution will evaporate out of the cap, after a few days in a refrigerator or in an external environment - more so if it is hotter.

Depending upon the environment - daily or every second day or so - again it's an environmental (temperature and humidity) issue as to how quickly the alcohol evaporates out from inside the needle cap.


** Also I got the maths wrong. If the dose is 20 International Units of insulin, and the tube holds 300 I.U. , and ONE needle will last a complete vial of insulin, there is ONE needle used for every person who used 15 needles per ampoule of insulin.

AND if you can figure out how to resharpen the needle between ampoules - under an alcohol drip, on some super fine abrasive, like a bar of aluminium spinning in a lathe, or a disk spinning in a drill chuck, with the needle in drag, not dig, with it's ultra fine aluminium oxide layer, a 6 mm needle can be resharpened 100 + times. I mean your only taking a hairs thickness off the end.

The trick in regrinding the needle is aligning the slant of the cut, with the surface of the grinding medium and it should only take a second or two. Then you need to remove the fine feather or curl, from the tip of the cutting edge, by a super light back side grind. And you will probably need a 200 to 400 magnification microscope to see it.