Half unit insulin pens for novorapid

[AliBal]

Hi , been advised to try half unit pens to assist with more accurate insulin doses with carb counting . Found you can only get with cartridges and not prefilled. Firstly do people find them useful , told its the novopen echo . Also we go away a lot and concern is do people have a spare one of these in case of pen failure or do you have normal novorapid pen doing full units as backup . Would value any experiences before going back to my practice nurse to agree plan . Many thanks

 

[Robin]

I use an Echo. I always had cartridges, though, so I kept my old pen as a back up, then when the battery in the top of the Echo failed, I kept that as a spare. I’d certainly want a spare. The battery is there because it tells you how many units you’ve injected, and how long ago. And that is the most useful feature of the pen (apart from the half units, obviously), it saves those senior moments when you think 'did I or didn’t I just inject?'

 

[nonethewiser]

Used echo pen before moving to pump, half units allows for more accurate dosing. Always had one spare in drawer, crazy not to have back up pen.

 

[rebrascora]

Agree with everything @Robin has said. The Echo is great but it is important to have a back up pen in case of breakage. It is just the same size as a disposable but a bit heavier, so no more really to take on holiday with you. The cartridges are easy to change and it is environmentally and probably economically better although the initial outlay for the reusable pens is obviously higher for the NHS, I would imagine over the lifetime of the pen, it will work out cheaper.... not that that is of any consequence if you need a half unit pen or your nurse feels it would be beneficial. I have them for both Levemir and NovoRapid and it is a really helpful feature to be able to check the last dose you injected and when.... it helped me figure out that I had accidentally given myself my evening dose of basal insulin at bedtime with my bolus pen... eek! That could have caused a very severe hypo a couple of hours later!
Anyway, I would definitely recommend the Echo.

 

[DaveB]

I have an Echo pen with a backup in case of need. I do use the half-unit aspect.

 

[Ljc]

I too have echo pens and one as backup which my nurse was happy to prescribe.

The pack of cartridges take up less space in your fridge than a pack of disposable pens, it’s very easy to change the cartridges.
The pens are more robust than the disposable ones , they look nice too. there is alsoa basic how much and when feature for those did I or didn’t I moments

 

[helli]

I only ever used refillable pens apart fro a short period when I was on a trial. I found the refillable pens more robust, provided less waste, the cartridges take up less space in my fridge and are incredibly easy to load into the pens. It surprises me that there is still an option for single use pens given how we are trying to reduce the amount of waste.

As for the half unit - it is wonderful. I now use a pump and sometimes give myself a correction of 0.1 units. The idea of being limited to whole units seems weird. I had a recent pump user failure (my fault not the manufacturer) and had 48 hours with my old single unit pen and my blood sugar levels fluctuated much more than usual.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

I only ever used reusable pens when on MDI, but rather than a spare pen I was happy to simply have a bag of syringes as a backup (i was used to syringes from the early days of my T1). In the unlikely event that a pen failed I figured I could easily survive with a syringe or two until a replacement was dispensed - and syringes worked equally well for both Lantus and Novorapid so the same backup worked for both 🙂