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c/reconstitution·posted 2 months ago by u/adaeze_cabrera

[Meta] the units rule is doing its job and people should stop complaining

Explainer

the units rule is doing its job and people should stop complaining. Short post, long comment section, probably.

Research-use-only material is not approved for human use, so treat everything in this thread as arithmetic about solutions rather than instructions for a person.

I keep a laminated card in the drawer with the arithmetic on it. Looks ridiculous. Has never once let me draw the wrong volume.

Spent 9 weeks confused about this until somebody drew the table for me. 15mg, 3mL, 5mg/mL, 2.5mg is 50 units. That is the whole thing.

Happy to answer the boring questions. Those are usually the ones worth asking.

170 up / 8 down95% upvoted20 commentsid 18acgj29 May 2026

20 comments

14 in this archive, depth 5

best — the order this archive was captured in

u/cardio_endpoint_c13 points·2 months ago

Aim the stream down the wall of the vial rather than into the cake. Reconstitution is a solubility problem, not a mixing problem, and mechanical shear does nothing helpful.

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[removed]9 points·2 months ago

[removed by moderator]

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u/india_generic_g13 points·2 months ago·edited

Is that a U-100 syringe? The barrel markings change the answer completely.

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u/adaeze_cabreraOP10 points·2 months ago

Are you accounting for the powder volume, or is that where the confusion is?

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u/sock_puppet_spotter15 points·2 months ago·edited

Bacteriostatic or plain sterile water?

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u/arto_falk12 points·2 months ago·edited

The lyophilised cake displaces a small volume, so the true concentration is very slightly lower than the arithmetic suggests. It is a fraction of a percent and it is dwarfed by fill tolerance.

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u/adaeze_cabrera-13 points·2 months ago·edited

The dead space question sent me down a rabbit hole for a week. It is a fraction of a unit and it is the same every draw.

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u/declared_value_dv7 points·2 months ago·edited

Disagree with the "more water is safer" framing. It is not safer, it is just a different number to divide by.

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u/ledger_modmod · vetting6 points·2 months ago

Not quite. Bacteriostatic and sterile water are not interchangeable for a multi-draw vial, and the difference is the preservative.

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u/reflux_report2 points·2 months ago

Agreed on the swirl. There is no reason to shake it and a good reason not to.

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u/sigrid_kaufmann1 point·2 months ago·edited

Agreed on the swirl.

Right, and the arithmetic behind it: 15mg in 3mL is 5mg/mL, so 0.5mg is 10 units.

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u/adaeze_cabreraOP1 point·2 months ago

Wrote the date on the vial as well as the concentration after losing track of which one was opened first.

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u/elin_ferrari1 point·2 months ago

the powder cake sits at the bottom, the volume you add is the volume that counts

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u/RetaAndRegret21 point·2 months ago

the powder cake sits at the bottom, the volume you add is the volume that counts

Disagreeing with this line only: adding more water is not a safety margin, it is a different divisor.

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About c/reconstitution

The arithmetic and the technique. Bacteriostatic versus sterile water, reconstitution volume as a concentration choice, converting mg/mL into insulin-syringe units, dead space, swirl-not-shake, stopper coring, and how long a reconstituted vial is actually good for. Math errors get corrected fast and politely.

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