Gluteal injections in increasingly obese population: Essential considerations for intramuscular injections

doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7544.795-a

BMJ 2006;332:795 (1 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7544.795-a

Letter

Gluteal injections in increasingly obese population

Essential considerations for intramuscular injections

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—We agree with Nisbet that standard available needlesmay be inappropriate for gluteal intramuscular injections, especiallywhen the incidence of obesity is increasing.¹ However, his paperseems to exaggerate the problem.

Firstly, there are other preferred sites for intramuscular injections—forexample, the mid-deltoid, rectus femoris, and vastus lateralis.²Simpler clinical variables such as the weight of the patient,muscle mass of the injection site, and the amount of subcutaneousfat should be assessed for choosing the correct needle length.³

In this study the sole criterion for the assessment of subcutaneousfat at gluteal region was the need to undergo the computed tomographyscans of the pelvis without mentioning the indication for whichthis was performed. Without knowing the underlying indicationit is hard to estimate how many of these patients would haverequired gluteal intramuscular injections.

Secondly, antiemetics and analgesics are the common drugs givenintramuscularly. However, the . . . [Full text of this article]

Saurabh Rai, vascular research fellow

University Hospital Birmingham NHS Trust, Selly Oak Hospital, Birmingham B29 6JD saurabh_rai@hotmail.com

Nidhi Nandan, senior house officer

Royal Shrewsbury Hospital, Shrewsbury SY3 8XQ

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