Handling and measurement
Insulin Syringe
Last updated
A small syringe with a fine, short, permanently attached needle, marked in insulin units instead of millilitres. Common barrel sizes hold 0.3 mL, 0.5 mL or 1 mL, printed on the packet as 30, 50 or 100 units on a U-100 scale. Because the needle is fixed rather than screwed on, almost no liquid is left behind in the tip.
Why it matters here
This is the syringe most people in this space actually handle, so its scale is the one every informally exchanged number is spoken in. The scale printed on the packet is the only thing that tells you what a single mark is worth in volume, and packets from different sources are not always the same scale.
What it is not
The unit marks measure volume, not insulin and not any other substance. They exist so that someone drawing standard-strength insulin could count marks instead of doing arithmetic, and that convenience does not carry over to anything else you put in the barrel; for every other liquid a unit is simply one hundredth of a millilitre on a U-100 syringe.
Also called
- insulin syringe
- insulin syringes
- slin pin
- slin pins
- slin syringe
- insulin pin
- u100 syringe
- u-100 syringe
Slin pin and slin syringe come from the shortened forum spelling of insulin. U-100 syringe names the scale printed on the barrel rather than a brand or a capacity.
Compounds carrying this term
None on file yet. This term is in the controlled vocabulary but no compound record currently uses it — which is a statement about our coverage, not about the term.