Quick question about injections

[Bunnylicked]

(Hopefully, this is the right forum for this type of question...)

My rabbit Mr. Bunny is on every-other-day Penicillin injections for a salivary gland infection. He's had 7 shots so far. The vet instructed me to give the shot into the skin between the shoulder blades. Well, tonight, after giving the 7th shot, I noticed that Mr. Bunny had some blood on his back. It seems that I accidentally stretched his skin in a strange way and gave him his shot on the middle of his back. :shock: It wasn't major bleeding - I stopped it with a cotton ball pretty quickly.

Could this have any bad effects on him? He seems to be behaving and hopping around normally so far, but I just gave the shot 10 minutes ago.

Thanks!

 

[rabbit_friend]

What kind of penicillin is it? Did the vet show you how to check to make sure you weren't hitting a blood vessel by drawing back on the needle before injecting? The benzathine in some kinds of penicillin can cause heart failure if it is injected into a blood vessel. If he is hopping around normally after 10 minutes though it sounds like you didn't do that, or don't have that kind of penicillin. You may have just nicked a blood vessel on the way out. Keep an eye on him for any strange behavior and I hope he doesn't show any ill effects. Be careful with that stuff though!

 

[Bunnylicked]

I believe that it's Bicillin, but I'm not quite sure. Yes, the vet showed me how to check to see if it was in a blood vessel first - the strange thing is, I didn't get any blood when I did that tonight.

 

[Maureen Las]

Make sure that any bicillin that has leaked out of the injection site is wiped from the bunny's fur so that she doesn't ingest it.

You are supposed to injectunder the skin and between the skin and the muscke; you may have nicked the muscle; if it would have been injected into a vein the bun would have reacted immediately

http://www.hlrsc.com/Articles/subcutaneousinjections.html

 

[pamnock]

The effects of getting too much pen in a blood vessel are nearly immediate and often fatal. I nicked a blood vessel on a filly when I gave her a pen shot and she immediately started to stagger and nearly fell (I didn't get enough into the vessel to be fatal.)

You do need to aspirate when injecting IM, but not subcut (no large vessels to hit).