Glass Particulate Contamination from Medications Aspirated from Glass Ampules:Comparison of Filtered Versus Non-Filtered Needles

摘要

An investigation was undertaken to determine if there is a decrease in the numberof glass particles aspirated from medications contained in glass ampules using filtered versus non-filtered needles of varying gauge. One hundred, 2 milliliter (ml) glass ampules were randomly assigned to one of four groups of needles: Group A, 18-gauge, non-filtered; Group B, 19-gauge, filtered; Group C, 20-gauge, non-filtered; and Group D, 25-gauge, non-filtered. Each ampule was opened by hand, aspirated through the specified needle into a ten milliliter syringe. The syringe was inverted several times to ensure mixing of glass particles in the solution. One and one half ml of the sample was expelled with the remaining 0.5 ml then examined under a light microscope with the glass particles observed counted. The mean number of particles counted and standard deviation for each of the four groups of needles was calculated. Although results demonstrated that use of the 19-gauge filtered needle had the lowest number of glass particle contaminants