Slashdot Mirror
Needle Free Injections With Microjets
IZ Reloaded writes "Do you hate needles? In the near future, the fear of needles would be a thing of a past. Bioengineering students at the University of California, Berkeley have developed the MicroJet. It uses an electronic actuator that could one day propel vaccinations, insulin or other drugs through the skin of the patient - without the device even touching the skin - with far less pain than a hypodermic needle."
here's one for salen t-company.com/product/PPF/ID/4200/new_prod_full.as p
http://diabetic-supplies.medical-supplies-equipme
Medi-Jector Vision(tm)Needle-Free Insulin Injection System
Accurate delivery of insulin injections from 2-50 units in 1 unit increments. Injector reusable for 3000 injections. No maintenance or cleaning required. Smaller, lighter weight and easier to use than previous models. Contains: injector, carrying case, training video, instruction manual, 2 Needle-Free Syringes (for easy and medium skin penetration) and 1 vial adaptor. Replacement Needle-Free Syringe kits sold separately.
what's amazing here?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Someone got his blog pointed at slashdot, while I love the subject, its 4 days old, been on blogs for 3 days and a poor cut and paste job from the original Press release.http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/release s/2005/03/16_microjet.shtml :)
Read the press release, its better
This technology's already in the marketplace:u se/index.php
http://medevoice.co.uk/themedicalho
these have been around for insulin injections for years.. though not manufactored on a large scale.. here's a modern distributor, and here's an article about tests on pigs in sept of 2004 that went well.
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
a good page to take a look at is http://www.cdc.gov/nip/dev/jetinject.htm Its the CDC's index to the technology and hasa lot of useful information
Jet injectors have been around since 1940. They were designed to inoculate in Africa, but they kept on jamming because of dust and sand. It was tossed aside for a 3 pronged fork-like needle which you just stabbed someone a couple of times, or scratched them to vaccinate them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_injector
Found a picture of one. It's not the one I've seen before, but it was used by the US military back in the 70's, called a Pet-o-Jet. There have also been a lot of patents on them going back into the 50's.
Most people dont realize that the needle itself doesnt sting much. Its the medicine. Some medicines when they come into contact with the flesh inside, sting like crazy. Others dont.
-Dracken
When I was a kid/teenager, I hated flu/booster shots. Og no like pain, pain bad, no pain.
Then, at the age of 23, I found a lump. It was cancer. While I didn't need chemo, I did get a lot of CT scans requiring an IV with a radiopaque substance (6 in my first year post-surgery) and bloodwork (12 in that same year).
After that, my GP strongly recommended I get a flu shot, as is suggested to anyone who's had cancer. I was a bit nervous (it had been years since I'd had one, partly because I was generally healthy, partly because I didn't like getting jabbed), but I got it anyway. And it didn't hurt. Let me tell you - after a few IVs and bloodwork needles, I can barely feel those flu shot needles anymore! I can't believe I used to be nervous about those damn things.
This year, I got a flu shot as well. And it didn't hurt.
I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis four years ago (at the age of 22). Then, the best treatment available was Avonex, which is given intramuscularly once a week. The needle is about 26 gauge and 1 1/4" long. With that needle, the pain was mostly psychological. There is nothing natural about stabbing yourself with a long, sharp object.
:-)
In fact, up until about a century ago, sharp objects piercing into your body has generally been a detrimental event. It meant that you were being bitten (with poison or germs getting injected past your outer layer defenses) or you were getting punctured by something that would result in an infection. So everything about your physical makeup and your psychology is evolved to consider injections to be a bad thing. In a twist of events, now it turns out that shard objects getting jabbed into your body is mostly a beneficial thing. But it will take a long time for evolution to change our aversion to injections. And with new technologies, it may not even be necessary for that adaptation to occur. I certainly hope this becomes the case in the *very* near future.
The nerves on the surface of your skin tend to cluster. So, the amount of pain related to the actual puncture of the skin varies greatly, depending on whether or not you happen to hit one of those nerve clusters. Sometimes the penetration of the skin would result in a strong pinching sensation; other times, I would not feel anything at all. For the intramuscular injections, it is also possible that you will hit another nerve on your way into the muscle tissue. That usually just results in a reflex reaction (you jump or twitch). The act of the actual injection is painless, since the solution is injected far below the surface pain receptors. But then you tend to get long-term dull pain similar to a charly horse; it's like a blunt end of a stick whacked you in the thigh and you have a nice bruise in your muscle. And $deity help you if you happen to hit your bone with the tip of the needle.
About a year ago, I switched therapies to Rebif, which is given subcutaneously three times a week. The needle is a smaller gauge and is signifianctly shorter (~1.5cm). It is unintuitive, but the subcutaneous injections, even though the needle is shorter and thinner, are much more painful than the IM injections, because the solution is injected just below the surface of the skin, where you have a lot more pain receptors. So it's not the needle really that I worry about. I hardly even feel that any more; it's the stinging sensation from the liquid getting pushed into the subcutaneous tissue just below the skin.
I use a spring-loaded injection contraption that hides the needle from my view entirely; I just hold the casing to my skin and push a button. The spring-loaded plunger pushes the needle in and presses the plunger of the syringe down to inject the medicine. I don't even worry about the needle any more; I worry about the sting with the liquid getting pushed under my skin and the subsequent itchy and burning red blotch that stays in that area for weeks afterward. So in my case, at least, the needle is a non-issue; this needle-less technology is neat, but it will not help with the pain associated with liquid getting pushed under my skin, and it will not help with the site reaction.
Wake me up when they figure out how to effectively administrate interferon-beta with a pill.
*shudder* and if you moved your arm when the "bat" hit your shoulder, the high velocity jet injection would slice your arm like a razor blade. I still have a scar from my first one. Needless to say, I didn't flinch on the next one down the gauntlet.
Each processor would proceed sequentially as if it had been better for them not to rise against Saul.
Unfortunately, I see nothing in the article that even mentions the issue of scarring, which imho should be a pretty big deal.
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
Here is a company that is working on a similar procedure that will not require the use of immune suppressing drugs. Much closer to a true cure. Though they have not yet perfected their technology, it looks very promising.
Thanks to advances in needles, there are insulin injection methods even for those of us that don't pump that are basically painless.
/.ers don't, but modern insulin needles (at least name-brand ones, if your pharmacy tries to sub in generics you're screwed) are TINY. The Becton Dickinson Ultra-Fine II/III series have almost invisible needles that are short and VERY thin. I rarely ever feel them. (Occasionally I hit a nerve directly - ouch. But most of the time they're not felt at all.)
You probably already know this but many other
Bloodsugar tests are a different story. My fingers are slightly callused from all the pinpricks - There are no real painless and definately no viable noninvasive bloodsugar monitoring techniques. Noninvasive bloodsugar monitoring is probably the second biggest Holy Grail in diabetes research (the biggest being an actual cure). The "alternative site testing" advertised by many modern meter manufacturers is highly overrated. If you read the manual of such meters you'll find that alternative site testing is inaccurate and gives a delayed reading and should not be used in many situations. (Of the 5-6 tests per day I run, only one is in conditions where AST is fine. And for that one test it's not worth changing lancet device heads.)
The thing I want most as a diabetic right now though is not painless/easier insulin injections (my NovoPen Junior with B-D Ultra-Fine III needles is both painless and convenient), or noninvasive testing (fingersticks are annoying but I'm used to it), it's CHEAP diabetes supplies. Bloodsugar meter test strips run on the order of $0.50-$1 per test. Insulin prices are skyrocketing. You're basically screwed unless you have a high-end medical insurance plan, which is TOUGH when you're a grad student.
But eventually, an actual cure would be damned nice.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
As a diabetic, I've tried lots of new gadgets (helps to have a doctor that's rather technologically literate)... and the Medi-Jector was the first device aside from needles that I've tried.
It's definitely NOT painless, but for around 5-10 units of insulin, it's rather "comfortable", but anything above that can be downright painful (more of a blunt pain than a sharp needle stick pain), and has also caused me welts. It's definitely not for injections where there's a lot of fat (stomach)... only for areas like the arms and legs.
Assuming you're American, I think they give you another TB test (using a regular needle) if the ring turns up red, not a TB vaccination. TB vaccinations aren't given in the US-of-A, mainly because they don't really work and they make you reactive to the TB test, often requiring you to get multiple chest x-rays over the course of your life.
I got my shots in the military with an pnumatic gun during the 80s, now that I came back to Iraq for the military as a civilian, no more guns! I asked one of the doctors where the shot guns went, and I was told that they had dosage problems with them. Apparently the dosage given out by those things was wildly inaccurate.