Glass Particulate Contamination from Medications Aspirated from Glass Ampules: Comparison of Filtered Versus Non-Filtered Needles

An investigation was undertaken to determine if there is a decrease in the number of glass particles aspirated from medications contained in glass ampules using filtered versus non-filtered needles of varying gauge. One hundred, 2 milliliter ml glass ampules were randomly assigned to one of four groups of needles Group A, 18-gauge, non-filtered Group B, 19-gauge, filtered Group C, 20-gauge, non-filtered and Group D, 25-gauge, non-filtered. Each ampule was opened by hand, aspirated through the specified needle into a ten milliliter syringe. The syringe was inverted several times to ensure mixing of glass particles in the solution. One and one half ml of the sample was expelled with the remaining 0.5 ml then examined under a light microscope with the glass particles observed counted. The mean number of particles counted and standard deviation for each of the four groups of needles was calculated. Although results demonstrated that use of the 19-gauge filtered needle had the lowest number of glass particle contaminants mean number of particles - 267.793, followed by the 20-gauge non-filtered mean - 270.542, 18-gauge non-filtered mean - 271.238, and 25-gauge non-filtered mean - 279.769 analysis of variance ANOVA indicated no significant difference existed between the four groups. Thus, no significant difference existed in the number of glass particles counted following aspiration of medications from glass ampules using filtered needles compared to non-filtered needles, or when comparing non-filtered needles of varying sizes