Injection needles

What are injection needles?

Injection needles (in medicine, hypodermic needles) are thin, hollow steel tubes with a beveled point, made to carry fluid through the skin. In BDSM they’re used in needle play and play piercing. Unlike an IV needle, the steel stays put as long as the needle is in the skin; there’s no cannula around it that takes over the work.

Why that hollow core matters

Because blood stays behind in it.

The RIVM’s national guideline on needlestick accidents explains what the risk classification rests on: the volume of blood that passes from one person to another in an accident. A thick hollow needle for a blood draw has a larger bore and holds more blood than a thin subcutaneous needle used to inject insulin. That’s why the thickness matters, and why that thickness is expressed in gauge: the higher the G, the thinner the needle.

The guideline rates an injury from a loose used hollow needle of less than 27 gauge as a high-risk accident. With a lancet of 27 gauge or thinner in a lancing device, the risk of HIV and hepatitis C is called negligible instead. Same material, different size, different story.

What you watch for with injection needles

With the needle itself there’s little to arrange. With what happens around it, all the more.

A needle comes out of a sealed sterile package, goes once through one skin and then disappears into a sharps container. Never a needle that has already been in someone else, and never the same needle twice within one session. For the same transferred blood volume, the chance of infection with hepatitis B is, according to the RIVM, many times greater than that of hepatitis C or HIV, and against hepatitis B there is a vaccine. That’s the cheapest precaution there is.

If it does go wrong and someone pricks themselves on a used needle, that’s not a matter for the next day. The guideline wants post-exposure prophylaxis against HIV to start as soon as possible, ideally within two hours and at most within seventy-two hours. After that it no longer has any use. So call your GP or the public health service, at night too.

Where this fits on my site

Needles are on my list of options, with the note “provocative subject” beside them. If you want to know how such a scene is built up and what we go over beforehand, that’s on the page about the BDSM date.

Sources

• National Guideline on Needlestick Accidents. National Coordination for Communicable Disease Control, RIVM, revision adopted 5 April 2019. Supplies the principle that the risk classification rests on the transferred blood volume and that a thick hollow needle holds more blood than a thin subcutaneous needle, the rule that a higher gauge number means a thinner needle, the classification of an injury from a loose used hollow needle of less than 27 gauge as a high-risk accident against a negligible HIV and HCV risk with a lancet of 27 gauge or thinner, the finding that for the same blood volume the chance of HBV infection is many times greater than that of HCV or HIV, and the time window for PEP: as soon as possible, ideally within 2 hours and up to 72 hours after the accident at the latest.
• Hypodermic needle. Wikipedia. Supplies the description as a very thin hollow tube with a single sharp point, its placement in the category sharps, the manufacture from stainless steel with a beveled point, and the fact that the thickness is measured on the Birmingham gauge, medically common from 7 to 34.

Related terms

• IV needles. The counterpart with a cannula, chosen when something needs to stay in the skin longer.
• Bloodplay. The category needle play with injection needles falls under, with the arrangements that go with it.
• Bloodsports. The same category under its other name.
• Edgeplay. The broader corner needle play is often counted in, and why the knowledge differs per practice.
• Abrasion. The other play at skin level, with scraping instead of pricking.
• Needle play. The practice itself, with how a scene runs and the arrangements around it.
• Play piercing. The practice under the name that stresses the piercing, with the vasovagal reaction that comes with it.