I reconstituted a 10mg vial with 2ml of bacteriostatic water and I want someone to check my unit arithmetic before I draw anything, because I keep getting two different answers.
The three numbers to write on the vial: total mg, total ml, and mg per ml. Everything else is division. And the sanity check is that dose volume times number of doses should be less than the volume you put in, because dead space takes the difference.
What I actually want to know is how much material I am losing to dead space, and whether that explains why a 10mg vial gives me nine usable draws rather than ten.
I have searched first, so if this is covered somewhere point me at it and I will read it.
Short answer first, then the reasoning. Do it in two steps and it stops being confusing. First concentration: 10mg into 2ml is 5mg/ml. Then volume: a 0.5mg dose is 0.5 ÷ 5 = 0.1ml. Then units, and this is where people go wrong — a U-100 syringe is graduated in hundredths of a millilitre, so 0.1ml is 10 units. The word "units" has nothing to do with milligrams; it is a volume marking that exists because insulin happens to come at 100 units per ml.
Ask again with the specifics and you will get a better answer than this one.
Dr.SportsMedIN said:Do it in two steps and it stops being confusing.
Agreed, and it is worth saying that rounding to the nearest whole unit is usually acceptable at maintenance doses and is not acceptable at the bottom of a ladder, where one unit can be a fifth of the intended dose.
Sigma-Aldrich — Research-Grade Standards
Certified reference materials, analytical reagents, and research-grade standards for peptide verification. Trusted by laboratories worldwide.
Shop Reference StandardsDr.NephBHM_UK said:I reconstituted a 10mg vial with 2ml of bacteriostatic water and I want someone to check my unit arithmetic before I draw anything, because I keep…
This matches mine closely enough to be worth saying so. Concentration choice is a precision decision, not a preference. Reconstitute high and every dose is a tiny volume where one unit of syringe error is a large fraction of the dose. Reconstitute low and you get more graduations per dose, so the same hand tremor costs proportionally less. Against that, more diluent means more benzyl alcohol and a shorter comfortable in-use window.
Adding the clinical framing, because it changes how the question reads.
Bacteriostatic water quality matters for dosing arithmetic reconstitution. Not all BAC water is created equal:
- Should contain 0.9% benzyl alcohol as preservative
- Must be sterile and pyrogen-free
- Should come in a sealed, intact vial
- Check expiration date — yes, BAC water expires
- Store at room temperature, protected from light
I buy from a reputable medical supply company, not Amazon marketplace sellers. The $3 savings isn't worth the infection risk from unverified BAC water.