I dropped my pen on the floor - is this an issue?

[Stinby]

When taking the box out of the fridge I've dropped the box on the floor. I inspected the pen and couldn't see any signs of damage and didn't really think much of it so I used it as normal. There were some air bubbles that disappeared when I tapped it during priming.

However, post-injection I've started to get a bit paranoid. I've now just googled it and saw some threads on reddit saying not to use it if it's dropped because there could be shards of glass, but they were American. Some others were saying that in the UK it's plastic not glass but there seemed to be disagreement on whether it was ok or not.

I've looked through the leaflet again and can't find anything about not using it other than to not use it if its damaged. Has anyone had this happen before?

It’ll be absolutely fine. There won’t be shards of glass in the vial, it’s extremely thick glass and designed to be durable. If there was a possibility that this could happen there would be very clear warnings on the box and on the patient leaflet telling you not to drop it and not to use it if dropped.

And if it was in the box when it was dropped there really is no chance of damage at all.

Thank you. This is really reassuring and a very good point.

Even if it were possible to inject a shard of glass small enough to pass through the tiny hole in the needle it would just sit under your skin without doing any harm.

I work with art glass and my fingers are full of tiny shards of glass that have managed to embed themselves under the skin, some of them have been there for over a decade. Art glass is beautiful, but it's not sterile like the inside of an injection pen, and yet I've never had a bad reaction to the tiny splinters that were too small to excavate. They do show up on X-rays as tiny little dots, but apart from that they are inert.

It wouldn't even occur to me to worry about this. It's fine op.