Finding veins in hand

I have normalish hands, but I can see the veins in the back of my hand pretty good in some places, not so well in others. At some point I want to put a chip there, but don’t want to be near the veins.

What’s the best way to make them stand out? Constrict blood flow? Ideally I’d like to be able to see them well enough to trace the complete pattern on my skin with a marker so I can evaluate my options.

If it’s for the purpose of implanting something without hitting a vein, the easiest is to pinch the skin under which you’re about to implant and roll it betwen your fingers. If there was any vein pinched between your fingers, it gets ejected by the rolling action.

If you’re afraid the implant might end up on top of a vein, fear not: one of mine did, and the vein rerouted itself after a few week :slight_smile:

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It’s more that I don’t have a specific location in mind, and I just wanna check out the open area options.

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I would suggest getting a tourniquet like they use for blood draws and practice putting it on yourself the correct way. Once you can, take a nice warm shower if you can, or just wash your hands with warm water well. This will help blood flow, and usually makes your veins pop better.

Then I would put the tourniquet on and look, keep your hand in your lap, or on a table, but not in the air above your heart. I would leave it on no longer than 2 minutes at a time.

I did this for my xSIID. I have a deeper vein that you can’t feel really at all with a tourniquet, after i use rather warm water and shower, it becomes slightly visible, but sigificantly more palpable.

Your veins feel like a firm, wet sponge when you are feeling for them. And when feel when you push, it should bounce back.

My veins are pretty prominent, I’ll attach a photo - it’s just a quick snap sitting here at my desk, and they’re obvious.

I have two implants on the back of my hand. One a pro did; one I did. Honestly, he nicked a vein and their was some minor bleeding and a subdermal hematoma, about the size of a quarter that went away in a day or so… Not a big deal at all. And he tented and rolled the skin and did the stuff you’re supposed to, I just had a decent size vein hiding.

I did the other, and I carefully lined up a spot that let me slide between two prominent veins. It was a little awkward, I had to use a less than ideal angle, etc., and it worked out fine. But, a couple of weeks after each of the implantations and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

So, my advice is to be careful, plan, do your best, but it isn’t catastrophic if the best laid plans don’t work out…

I put my xG3 between the 4th and 5th metacarpal. For a good 6 months it was floating all over the back of my hand. At one point I could slide it from deep between my knuckles to nearly my wrist. It finally settled down sitting in between the 3rd metacarpal and a large vein. No issues after that.

Good to know, mine’s very close to one.
The human body is awesome!

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Yeah no kidding.

After the swelling had cleared on that particular implant (2 or 3 days), I could see it was installed straight across atop one of the larger veins in my hand. I could even feel it pulse with the vein - not inside my hand, but touching it with my fingers. It looked and felt slightly odd, but it didn’t hurt or anything, so I let it be.

And then one day as I was fiddling with the implant during a boring business meeting, I noticed it didn’t pulse no more. I looked down, and lo, the vein had gotten out of the way all by itself!

Here, I’ve taken a picture of my hand in grazing light and annotated it to try and show exactly what happened:

Note that this is a coated implant. Had it not been coated, maybe it would have moved out of the way instead of the vein. Also, maybe the vein has moved because it was pushed out by the hard “blob” my body formed around the implant.

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Went looking for those vein finders. I find two kinds, those above 3000 dollars and way way up, or chinese el-cheapos.

Anybody ever try a cheapy?

You were on an artery if you felt that.

Ah yes, true that. Now that you mention it, I’m looking at it edgewise right now and I can see it pulsing, as well as a few others here and there. I didn’t realize arteries ran that close to the surface. I thought they ran deeper than veins. Then again, I’m no doctor :slight_smile:

They work pretty well



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Is a good lay out of where arteries are.

I would be much less concerned over nicking a vein, vs nicking an artery. Still don’t want to nick either of them though to start with.

I also used to put in radial arterial lines in patients for monitoring blood pressure with heart surgeries. I don’t claim to be a professional, but I do have knowledge to a degree.

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