Is there any reason the vaccine is given in the arm vs the buttock other than ease of administration?
A lot of vaccinations are drive through. I can’t think of anybody willing to drop trousers in their car. It’s also impractical at clinics where you would need to erect modesty screens for each person getting a vaccination. I’d say it’s a combination of practicality on the part of people administering the vaccines and modesty on the part of the people getting the shots. An intramuscular shot can be given either place.
Also, if you get sore at the vaccination site, would you really want it to be somewhere that you need to sit on?
What has been stated already, plus, who wants to say “buttocks” over and over again.
Plus, because of concerns about sexual abuse, increasingly there is a requirement for two staffers whenever a patient is required to disrobe, particularly women patients. That increases time and cost. Just need one person when the patient rolls up their sleeve.
Got my first Pfizer dose yesterday and the idiot right before me, wearing a short sleeved T-shirt, kept trying to pull his shirt’s neck down enough to expose his upper arm. People in line kept were looking at each other, rolling their eyes.
One car funeral and all that.
ETA: heh, @cochrane
Although these vaccinations would be slightly less painful…
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No one wants to lower their pants for a mere vaccine, since there are alternatives which are not very painful.
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The doctor or nurse does not want to see your butt. The patient does not want to display their butt without a compelling reason. If the patient is uncomfortable, and some would be, a second person is busy with other things and also does not want to see your butt without a compelling reason.
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This would take much more time.
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Complications of vaccine - a local allergic reaction, infection, etc. are hard to see and might not be noticed.
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Sometimes (as with a Mantoux test), the injection area needs to be looked at again to measure the induration. Not applicable here. The doctor or nurse definitely does not want to look at your butt twice.
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Theoretical concerns: probably would not be painful to sit down, but it would if it got infected, which might be slightly more likely in some areas. Harder to remove bandaid. A difference in uptake speed between subcutaneous and intramuscular shots.
The importance of injecting vaccines into muscle
Traditionally the buttocks were thought to be an appropriate site for vaccination, but the layers of fat do not contain the appropriate cells that are necessary to initiate the immune response (phagocytic or antigen-presenting cells). The antigen may also take longer to reach the circulation after being deposited in fat, leading to a delay in processing by macrophages and eventually presentation to the T and B cells that are involved in the immune response. In addition, antigens may be denatured by enzymes if they remain in fat for hours or days. The importance of these factors is supported by the findings that thicker skinfolds are associated with a lowered antibody response to vaccines.1,2
The three gluteal muscles are at most an inch thick. The roundy part we men love so much is fat. I was astonished when I was first exposed (heh) to them in a cadaver lab.
What advantage does the OP think the butt would have?
It makes those “Does this look inflamed to you?” conversations a lot more socially awkward.
What, what, in the butt.
South Park - potentially NSFW.
Are any other vaccines given in the butt? I thought shots in the butt were done to disperse a drug in the glutes.
I don’t remember my own childhood vaccinations- but as I recall my kids ( born in 89 and 90) got their vaccinations in the thigh and then the upper arm as they got older. And all my adult vaccinations ( shingles, flu, Tdap ) have been in my upper arm.
It appears that doctors now avoid injections into the buttocks because of the risk of injuring the sciatic nerve
Modesty and embarassment are huge motivators to people. There are people in China, for instance, who refused to travel to visit family over the holidays simply because an anal-swab Covid test would have been required. You can expect a similar backlash if butt-vaccinations were the norm.
Resistance to vaccinations, and anti-vaxxing, is already intense and strong enough in society to begin with. Adding shame and mortification to it would only worsen the anti-vaxxing situation that much more.
Plus, patients would ask, “Of all places on the body, why DOES it have to be the butt?” And doctors and nurses wouldn’t be able to give a convincing answer.
Not suggesting there would be an advantage. I think I got vaccinated in the buttock when I was a child.
If in the lower half, is there any reason the glutes are preferred over (say) the quads, which could be exposed more discreetly, at least if you’r wearing a skirt?
That’s a parody of this.
You and Hawkeye:
I learned (while in tib-fib traction for a month) that the best site for any injection is the front of the thigh. Plenty of muscle, easy enough to get at in a hospital gown or skirt and doesn’t get ouchy no matter how much you’re injecting into it. I might slip on a skirt for my COVID vaxx, especially since I’ve had a right frozen shoulder (now mostly resolved) and a scorching case of tendinitis in the left shoulder (getting better but the deltoid insertion has adhesions out the wazoo) and I’m cranky about anything that might cause more shoulder pain. My thighs can handle a bazooka hit so I’m thinking that might be the way to go. I go to Kaiser and used their drive through for my flu shot and the nice nurse there said if I wanted it in my arse she’d be totes okay with it but I passed for everyone’s sake as I was wearing jeans at the time. She would have put it in the hip but still. Don’t wanna be rude!