Hi Melainie, a year ago, I was asking everyone the same question for intra-articular injection in rat. What I did, I practiced on dead rats with some blue dye. I figured out what was good for me. In rat, I do inject on medial side of knee between patella (slightly below) and femur-tibia junction (feeling by finger touch). Angle of needle is 30 degree. I use hamilton syringe and needle attached so that I can finely track the volume (that is very important). You may use thinner possible needle (since you are rupturing synovious to avoid synovial fibrosis) depend what you are injecting if it is viscous or fluid.
I will suggest you to practice on some discarded carcass of mice. You will get better confidence,
Hi Melainie, a year ago, I was asking everyone the same question for intra-articular injection in rat. What I did, I practiced on dead rats with some blue dye. I figured out what was good for me. In rat, I do inject on medial side of knee between patella (slightly below) and femur-tibia junction (feeling by finger touch). Angle of needle is 30 degree. I use hamilton syringe and needle attached so that I can finely track the volume (that is very important). You may use thinner possible needle (since you are rupturing synovious to avoid synovial fibrosis) depend what you are injecting if it is viscous or fluid.
I will suggest you to practice on some discarded carcass of mice. You will get better confidence,
Hi Subhash, thanks for your reply! I have been doing exactly what you suggested--practicing on dead mice with blue dye using a hamilton syringe. However, we were unclear on the method of actually inserting the needle into the articular space. We were instructed to come in from the medial side and insert underneath and almost flush with the patellar tendon, but found during practice, after opening up the joint, it seemed to only be delivering the dye to the fat pad. We were then unsure if this was what the expected outcome of an IA injection was or if it's supposed to actually get into the synovial capsule. Over the last day, we have found from a collaborator a video that shows a *frontal* approach with the needle being inserted directly medially to the patellar tendon. We're still unsure whether this approach will effectively surpass the fat pad, but it seems logical that it would make it a lot more probable. Of course, practicing is our main goal now to try to be as consistent as possible, but we really want to make sure we're injecting into the correct area, as it seems there really isn't a good consensus or demonstration of technique even though there is a plethora of papers that use IA injections.
P.S. I also shared your response with the graduate student, Michael David, that is also helping with the injections and he said that a few years back you showed him how to isolate an FDL tendon at UR! Small world!
Thanks, Melanie,
It is a small world, discussion is the best way to go to learn things.
It was very nice to meet you on RG site,-
Good luck with your work,
Subhash
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