Drugs commonly administered subcutaneously include local anesthetics, drugs used in palliative care (e.g., fentanyl and morphine), and biopharmaceuticals (e.g., vaccines, heparin, insulin, growth hormone, hematopoietic growth factors, interferons, and monoclonal antibodies).
[7]: 123–4 Intramuscular injections may produce a syndrome called livedo dermatitis.
[6] Adequate patient education and training on correct procedure for self-administration can lower the incidence rate of reactions.
[10] In some cases, reactions and their severity may diminish with subsequent administrations of the drug.
[2] For many biologics (e.g., monoclonal antibodies), injection site reactions are the most common adverse effect of the drug, and have been reported to have an incidence rate of 0.5–40%.