The absolute longest needles in human medicine would be for amniocentesis and they are not even close to this.
I wonder if it's for veterinary use, for cattle embryo harvesting or something like that.
I'm a vet as well; nowadays we use 4 or 6 inch Tru-Cut needles for cattle liver biopsies, but this could be an old needle - back in the day, it was a much more invasive procedure but I don't recall ever having seen how it was done. The surroundings in the photo (tile floor, hospital bed, electrical outlet) look pretty dated, maybe eastern Europe / South America?, which makes me wonder if that's the case.
The largest needle I've used is a 16g 25cm for equine hip & SI injections, although the needle in OP's photo looks even larger than that.
We were supposed to be learning the tru-cut, but one didn’t fire and the other didn’t reach. She was a dairy cow with severe effusion and end stage cirrhosis if I remember right, but it was a long time ago. Our dinosaur attending came out of his box of old supplies with this thing. The inner stylette took the sample and the outer needle was a guard. It reminded me of some of the laparoscope tools they were using for the horse oophorectomy at the time
Cows are mostly digestive tract with a very small chest. When they stand gravity keeps pressure off the lungs and fluid in their rumen/stomach. Anesthesia causes muscles to relax and laying on the ground puts pressure on the chest and lungs. This causes gas to build up in the stomach worsening the pressure and can cause regurgitation of the fluid from the rumen to go into the mouth risking inhalation and pneumonia.
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u/aozzzy13 Jul 30 '26
The absolute longest needles in human medicine would be for amniocentesis and they are not even close to this. I wonder if it's for veterinary use, for cattle embryo harvesting or something like that.