OmniPod Insulin Removal

Recently my sons OmniPod "stop working" and we were caught without spare insulin. I realize removing the PODs insulin is frowned upon, but does anyone have any tricks to do so? Simply attemping to extract insulin from the fill port didn't seem to work.

I've tried a few times but haven't had any joy. Here, try reading the tips in this thread:

http://www.tudiabetes.org/group/omnipodusers/forum/topics/how-to-draw-out-insulin-from-a-used-or-failed-pod

Good luck. :)

I take a screwdriver & pry it apart, remove the the cartridge/circuit board & stick the tubing in a new syringe & turn the 'advance' wheel on the cartridge. Insulin is to expensive to waste whats left in the pod when there is a problem.

Try it on a used pod..

gorajekd - are you on the new pods or the old ones? I use the old ones and can stick the original syringe in the fill hole and pull out some of the remaining insulin. However, with the new pods, I *hear* that the needle on the syringe is much shorter making it extremely difficult to pull insulin back out. It was a necessary design change for the smaller, oblong shaped reservoir in the new pods, so "they" say :)

I just did this at work. I fished out a small bag of syringes I keep on hand for when I only have a vial available to me. I used the long needle to draw the insulin back out of the pod. I was able to almost fill the 30 unit syringe. I’m keeping it at my desk this afternoon to bolus as needed until I can get home in a few hours. Oh, and Omnipod is officially on my you-know-what list. Nearly an ENTIRE box of Omnipods failed this month!

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we recently had some other members reporting multiple failures

one was particularly plagued with a box from a particular lot number

(welcome to our community btw)

Old thread, but I’ll add my 2cents that I do this all the time when I have a pod go early because of an occlusion, and never have any difficulty. Just poke the needle from the new pod in the fill port from the old one, and suck the insulin out with the syringe. Works every time.

Only “issue” is about 10-20U can’t be recovered, so if you have less than that, you won’t get anything.

As for being frowned upon, yeah, I’ve heard that. I don’t buy it. As long as you’re careful and follow sterile procedures, there better not be any issue – that stuff was slated to go into me already anyway. It better be sterile!

I think the discouragement is simply because the industry doesn’t trust us regular clams to do it safely and cleanly. More opportunity to screw it up. So they say no.

I’ve had mixed success with recovery. It’s usually no problem, but sometimes it just won’t come out. I assume that’s because the piston sticks, but I’ve never opened one up to actually see what’s going on. My rule of thumb is pull out insulin that has been in around a day or less; otherwise, start over. Insulin has to get pretty warm next to your body in a pod, so I don’t reuse what’s been on my body for more than a day, give or take.

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