So, part of getting your teeth scaled is the twelve different shots of anesthetic jabbed into your gums.
As I’m trying to find my Happy Place to distract me, one of the thoughts I snared as it floated by was, "Christ, the dentist’s needles, well the plunger thingy really, is HUGE compared to those little plastic hypodermics they use at the doctor’s office. I wonder why that is… "
I asked the hygenist, and she didn’t know. (Well, maybe she couldn’t tell what I was asking. Half my face was numb, and in my attempt to not bite my tongue off I was avoiding using it too much as I couldn’t really assess exactly where it was in my mouth.)
So, anyway, why are the plungers on dental needles those big scary metal things with the round thingy at the end like this? Only thing I could think of is that they are meant to be used over and over so need to be durable, unlike medical syringes which are plastic cuz they’re meant to be disposable. What gives?
More precisely, the mechanism is re-used forever (with a visit to the autoclave between uses). The vial of anaesthetic and its needle are single-patient use, disposable items that are inserted into that big scary metal syringe.
Actually, they’re not that big, but because you normally don’t see them until it’s in your mouth, it looks enormous.
The round loop allows the dentist to deliver Novocaine to several locations in the mouth with one hand, while retracting cheek, tongue and lips with the other. The loop on the plunger increases control and prevents the thumb from slipping off the plunger while maneuvering inside the patient’s mouth.
The thumb loop also enables the dentist to *pull back * on the plunger a tad to be sure s/he is not injecting directly into a blood vessel – something that is a no-no, especially for patients with heart problems. (This little plunger test has a technical name, but I forget it.) There was a Novocaine thread not too long ago that mentioned this.
I asked my dentist how the electricity gets to the examination light. In this set up, the light is suspended on two steel bands about 1/16 of an inch thick by ½ inch. No place for wires.
I didn’t consider that the bright light was low voltage, and the electricity went through the supports themselves. There are no wires.
So, after he is done with me, he proceeds to take the light apart to have a look for himself. Sure enough, no wires, the power goes through the uninsulated straps that support the light. Just low voltage. Weird. You could, I suppose short the thing out with a metal tool, as long as it was 12” long or so.
Anyone with a little experience can aspirate a syringe. It’s done with every non-intravenous injection, whether medical or dental.
The only reason for the loop at the end is that is the holder is provided by the manufacturer of the unit dose syringe. It’s the delivery system for that particular brand.
Actually the reposible part is a syringe holder the medication is provided in a syringe, just not one with a plunger. The big, scary metal thingy is, in essence, just the plunger. They come in both metal and plastic. Neither lasts forever.
They may or may not be autoclaved, depending on the material, but they are sterilized.
Can you explain this a little further? I don’t quite get what you’re saying. Is it just a mattter of style and aesthetics for the anesthesia? Isn’t there another way to make them so they don’t look so gruesome?
Of course nothing’s forever, but I just meant that as saying it’s not thrown out after one use. And most people can readily grasp the idea of “autoclaving,” as a one-word catch-phrase even if it really gets nothing more than a dip in a dental variety of Barbicide.
Unit dose… that’s the term I just couldn’t shake out of my head for the (heh!) single-shot packaging.
The technique of pulling back the plunger with the thumb is called aspirating. (Picunurse mentioned the word in her/his post without explaining that s/he was referring to what I described in #4.) If the doc sees little trails of blood coming back into the glass tube during the aspirating process, he needs to pick another spot.
Just came back from the dentist where I asked him about this to refresh my memory.
And so, then, I assume medical syringe plungers are really no bigger than the syringe itself, and don’t have that intimidating fear-inducing ring at the end because it’s assumed that you would a) not be using the syringe to inject more than one place, or b) no need to aspirate for whatever reason, or c) that your other hand would not be otherwise in use holding back cheek & gum?
IOW, now that I understand why dental syringes are the way they are, why are medical syringes different?
