
Originally Posted by
phaedo
I think, largely, the reason many clients found participating on this board run out of medication early is due to the general disposition of the audience: overly detailed, slightly obsessive, and surely pedantic that, for better or worse, have a more abstruse motif to "over think" the injection process (me included!). I would wager most patients on injectable forms of TRT never even recognize this potential of "wasted testosterone." I mean this:
As it's been voiced in this thread, part of the confusion and consequent early refill derives from whether to "compensate" for the dead space in the needle hub and testosterone not dispensed after the plunger is fully depressed. With interchangeable needles on a standard syringe, the "wasted" or leftover drug accounts for about ~ 0.04 - 0.06 mL, dependent on the needle length and gauge.
Medical equipment manufacturers have acknowledged what's trapped within the needle hub**, albeit in clinical settings dealing with large volume of injections. In other words, the "overhead" or wasted testosterone is minute, and in the long run, negligible for individuals.
If you inject 100 mg every week, where a 10 mL vial is prescribed to last you 10 weeks, and you aggregate a "wasted" amount of 0.5 mL, your measured testosterone levels (labs) reflect the overhead regardless. Blood tests account for the amount injected, and what is not injected, or leftover, is consistently left out. In business parlance, this is metaphorically similar to a "fixed cost."
** Terumo, for instance, sales the SurSaver syringe with a permanently attached needle, minimizing the dead space. Since TRT requires needles to be changed between draw and injection, the SurSaver line is an optimal choice.
As "Low Testosterone" alluded: don't make common sense hard.