No More Needles: MIT Develops High-Powered Liquid Injection Device

[edcantor]

f you’re queasy about getting shots because you don’t like needles, MIT scientists have developed a new drug injection method just for you.

Instead of pricking the skin, a prototype handheld injector device instead delivers medicine as an extremely thin, exceptionally high-powered jet of liquid, which has enough force to breach skin, yet does so with such precision and speed that it doesn’t cause pain or discomfort, nor does it leave behind a noticeable hole, according to the MIT researchers who created it.

“Skin is flexible and because the hole we produce is so small the elasticity of the skin ‘closes up’ the hole,” said Ian Hunter, an MIT professor of mechanical engineering that led the research behind the prototype injector, in an email to TPM.

“Moreover, the skin repairs the hole in a day or so,” he added.

Video here:
http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/05/mit-needles-liquid-injections.php

[razorman]

1. This is nothing new. I was vaccinated with a needle-less injector of some sort

when I joined the Navy in 1974. All us recruits walked down a line of corpsmen, getting the injections, one after another. I do not know how this new device might differ from that one.

[edcantor]

2. Yes, but...

Jet-injection devices were first developed in the private sector in the 1940s. Military scientists adapted the early devices to create needle-free, multiuse-nozzle jet injectors capable of 600 or more subcutaneous injections per hour from 1949 onward, primarily for basic training camps. The Army's Aaron Ismach and Abram Benenson developed a nozzle for intradermal vaccination, used in civilian mass smallpox immunization campaigns in the 1960s (4, 10, 20, 258–262). Unfortunately, the device's use of the same unsterile nozzle and fluid pathway to provide injections to consecutive patients allowed transmission of blood-borne pathogens (e.g., hepatitis B, human immunodeficiency virus) in civilian settings, and the devices have fallen into disfavor (263, 264). In contrast, a new generation of disposable-cartridge jet injectors is being developed to avoid these safety concerns by using a disposable, sterile fluid pathway for each patient.

http://epirev.oxfordjournals.org/content/28/1/3.full

First published online: June 8, 2006

[razorman]

4. Interesting. I never knew exactly what they were using. Guess the U.S. Gov't

had no problem using suspect medical devices on military people.

[edcantor]

5. Actually, I think the incidence of Hepatitis, and HIV was NOT

very significant in the 1970's, certainly true for HIV, which hadn't been discovered yet.

So what if one in 1000 soldiers wound up with hepatitis? It was simply NOT worth the effort to save a few $ on the mass inoculation wherein thousands of troops were saved from other illnesses.

The issue here is bodily fluid "blow-back" onto the instrument of inoculation. Now, 40-50 years later, we know more about the means to spread illnesses than we did in 1972.

I think MIT, with their affiliation with Harvard Medical School, has researched the literature, and has come up with something that may take 10 seconds per recruit, and 10 seconds per patient, but offers less chance of negative effects from doing it this way. I certainly hope they know the entire literature, and have advanced the science and clinical art of inoculation technology in a positive way. We both await the results of trials and peer review of this new technique.

[HopeHoops]

3. They had that shit in 1970 - got a measles injection at school that way. Still hurts.

Since then, I've had so much shit stabbed in me that I don't even mind needles. I have to go in next week to have about 3/4 of my blood extracted by vampires for test and store my piss in a cup for 24 hours. Yeah, that should be fun. I'm just SO looking forward to it.

[edcantor]

6. I honestly don't think you realize the difference in methodology, nor have you

read my other posts on this issue on this thread. Nor did you bother to read all the other links fully.

Have a nice life.