Is it more painful to have an injection or to take medicine?

Is it better to get an injection or take medicine when you are sick? See what the experts say.

In recent years, the saying that injections are not good has been widely circulated, and the most cited reasons are nothing more than "foreign injections are the last step" and the harm is too great. But what is the truth? Is it better to take medicine or an injection when you are sick? Hu Xin, the pharmacist in charge of the Pharmacy Department of the Third Hospital of Beijing Medical University, once answered relevant questions on the online "100,000 Why Are You Healthy" answering platform of family doctors, and listened to what experts said together.

Injected drugs are absorbed faster than oral drugs, but oral drugs are safer.

Hu Xin first pointed out that this view is one-sided. He said that oral administration and injection are two commonly used methods of administration, each with its own advantages and disadvantages and uses.

The advantage of oral administration is relative safety, and it is the most commonly used and common method of administration. Anyone with general symptoms and sound gastrointestinal function should take it orally. Sometimes, when taking certain drugs orally, in order to avoid gastric acid destroying the drugs, special treatment can be carried out, such as making enteric-coated tablets. The disadvantage of oral drugs is that they cannot meet the needs of all patients. For coma patients who can't take oral medicine, people who often vomit or have difficulty swallowing, or patients with gastrointestinal diseases who are not easily absorbed, it is not suitable for oral medicine.

The advantages of injection method are accurate dosage, fast drug absorption and quick effect, which can avoid the destruction of digestive juice. For critically ill patients who cannot take drugs orally, or drugs or diseases that are not suitable for oral administration, injection can be used. Its disadvantages are high aseptic requirements and strict disinfection of administration instruments (such as syringes). ), it is inconvenient to use at home, and the injection also hurts. And different conditions, different doses, need different injection methods.

Therefore, which is better, injection or medicine, cannot be generalized. Hu Xin said, however, one principle can be followed, that is, when oral administration can achieve effective treatment, it is not necessary to use injection; Intravenous injection, which can be injected subcutaneously or intramuscularly, is not only to give full play to the curative effect of drugs, but also to ensure the safety of drugs. Therefore, taking medicine or injection depends on the situation, and we can't unilaterally emphasize which method is good.

It is recommended to pay more attention to medical treatment and medicine purchase.

In addition, Hu Xin suggested that patients, especially elderly patients, should ask the doctor every time they see a doctor and prescribe drugs: how many drugs have been prescribed and whether these drugs have serious side effects, so as to remind the doctor to check whether the prescribed drugs are wrong again; Patients with chronic diseases who need long-term drug treatment should ask the doctor whether the drugs prescribed this time are different from those prescribed in the past and whether the dosage has changed, which can also remind the doctor to check the drugs again.

Don't worry when you go to the drugstore to get medicine. When it's your turn to take medicine, you'd better ask the pharmacist if it's your own medicine, how many kinds, whether there are any medicines with special usage, whether there are any medicines that need special storage, and so on. This will not only prevent you from taking someone else's medicine by mistake, but also remind the pharmacist to check it again to prevent the wrong medicine from being issued and mislabeled.

Before taking medicine, patients must carefully check all drugs, especially children, and be more careful when taking medicine. Only after knowing the method of taking each drug, the safe dosage and the interval time can you start taking the drug. For unconventional drugs, if children take a certain drug and take more than one tablet/bag/pill at a time, they should first ask the pharmacist in the pharmacy; If patients with chronic diseases find that the medicine prescribed this time is different from before, it is best to consult a pharmacist without a doctor's explanation.