Self Bleeding!

[bass]

lower arm is a shitty place to stick a needle in, the vein moves side to side. they must have a way to hold it in place, i sue couldn't. drawing with a syringe by yourselves is very difficult. one of our members here (Far from massive) uses a vacuum pump and small gauge butterfly needle. you could try his method. i don't know his complete setup but i remember it was very simple. PM him if you're interested.

[gymffiti]

lower arm is a shitty place to stick a needle in, the vein moves side to side. they must have a way to hold it in place, i sue couldn't. drawing with a syringe by yourselves is very difficult. one of our members here (Far from massive) uses a vacuum pump and small gauge butterfly needle. you could try his method. i don't know his complete setup but i remember it was very simple. PM him if you're interested.

Before they put the needle in, I think they put a finger to one side of the (radial artery) vein and pull down a little

Even though it was my first (& to this date, only) attempt, I actually found it surprisingly easy to find the vein ... Hopefully it wasn't just beginners luck lol

Thanks for the advice Bass. I'll see if FFM is still around and if he's willing to share his setup

[Far from massive]

Hey guys been off the board for a while and just got a PM on this, but figured I would post on the board so all could see.

You said you used a butterfly and a syringe....If so by pulling the syringe plunger back you should have plenty of vacuum, most likely you just were not in a vein.

If you are using blood for a blood drive they need to remove the blood without destroying the blood cells....this is the reason for the large needles the smaller gauge will destroy a lot of the cells.

Not sure if you if you are trying to pull 5 mls of blood for some kind of labwork? If so,

For Labwork this may also be the case...however I am not sure, its easy to envision tests where the first thing they do is centrifuge (spin) the blood to separate the components and broken cells would negate this.

My guess is that you are a lot better off using the standard double ended needle deal where there is one needle that punctures the vein then a plastic tube with another needle inside that punctures the blood collection container. These containers that you place into the receiver end of the double ended needle are called Vacutainers and have a set amount of vacuum inside of them to create the blood flow into the container as well as an agent inside the tube that causes various changes to the blood with the tube prior to testing at the lab.

[gymffiti]

Hey guys been off the board for a while and just got a PM on this, but figured I would post on the board so all could see.

You said you used a butterfly and a syringe....If so by pulling the syringe plunger back you should have plenty of vacuum, most likely you just were not in a vein.

If you are using blood for a blood drive they need to remove the blood without destroying the blood cells....this is the reason for the large needles the smaller gauge will destroy a lot of the cells.

Not sure if you if you are trying to pull 5 mls of blood for some kind of labwork? If so,

For Labwork this may also be the case...however I am not sure, its easy to envision tests where the first thing they do is centrifuge (spin) the blood to separate the components and broken cells would negate this.

My guess is that you are a lot better off using the standard double ended needle deal where there is one needle that punctures the vein then a plastic tube with another needle inside that punctures the blood collection container. These containers that you place into the receiver end of the double ended needle are called Vacutainers and have a set amount of vacuum inside of them to create the blood flow into the container as well as an agent inside the tube that causes various changes to the blood with the tube prior to testing at the lab.

Thanks for taking the time to share your knowledge

Yeah, I do want to transfer the blood into collection tubes (already supplied by a website), then send for analysis. They're about 2" tall with additives



I've had prior experience with Vacutainers ...

I'm reluctant to use the vacuum assist option, because last time I had blood taken by a professional, they failed to get any blood with one of those. She basically said 's*d it, these are cr*p anyway' ... It was a very long appointment

Despite that bad experience, I am willing to give it a go. But I'd have to find Vacutainer tubes without additives and they appear to be vastly more expensive than other colour tubes.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/BD-VACUTAIN...dp/B01IYNVCBK/

If I can't find a cheaper supplier of Vacutainer tubes without additives, hopefully I can have success with a bigger gauge butterly needle, if I replace my tourniquet with a manual BP pump

A quick question though - When using a butterfly needle, which is best for more drawing pressure ...

A short & fat syringe or a long thin insulin style syringe (of the same mls)?

Thanks again for your input

[Far from massive]

For those just trying to take out a pint of blood to reduce RBC counts.

What I do is to take a regular lab jar and place two hoses in the lid one goes to a needle and penetrates the jar to near the bottom of the bottle.

The second one goes to the vacuum pump and on this hose the hose should just clear the top of the screw on lid so that it does not suck up any blood only air from within the bottle. Whether you use a hand pump or an electric pump, is up to you, I use a hand pump...its a fair amount of work since on my abused ass blood it takes about 10 minutes to pull a pint at 10 in/hg vacuum through a 22g needle.

As said by Bass a 16g needle is used on blood drives but that's to keep the cells intact and its fairly damaging to the vein compared to even a 20g....my own personal "happy middle ground" is a 22g needle but for those with better blood a smaller gauge will also work.

I used to use butterflys, however with the right size clear tubing ( sorry I bought it yrs ago and do not remember the size ) all you have to do is take a pair of scissors and cut the locking edges off the end of the luer lock needle so that it is more or less a rounded rim and it will seal the needle fine although it takes a lot of effort to force the end of the needle into the tubing.