It has come to our attention, that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved two versions of the reciprocating syringe from Avanca Medical Devices. The company is a spin-off of the University of New Mexico. Here is additional info about the syringe:
In procedures such as biopsies and spinal taps, where a doctor uses one hand to feel the body or adjust instruments, he must use his other hand alone to pull the syringe’s plunger out – typically by pushing against suction of the patient’s body with just his thumb.
If the pressure of the awkward motion makes his hand shake or jerk, the patient is the one to suffer – with extended hospital stays or additional pain, said Sibbitt, who thinks he has solved the problem by creating a new type of syringe.
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To fight the problem in his own practice, Sibbitt started tinkering with conventional syringes to come up with something new – a two-buttoned syringe that uses a pulley system to lift the needle out of the patient as the doctor pushes down on a second button, rather than trying to lift a single one with his thumb.
“Hands, their strength is grasping things,” Sibbitt said. “The weak part is extension of the fingers and stretching. The reason this new syringe works is it uses the strengths of the hand by letting the thumb clench the button.”
Sibbitt had 22 doctors try his test on the foam pad with both a conventional syringe and the new type he invented. All of them performed significantly better with the two-buttoned syringe – called the reciprocating syringe, he said.
“On a zero-to-10 scale the physicians rated the conventional syringe as a 2 and the new syringe as a 9,” Sibbitt said. “They just didn’t know something like this could be made.”
More here (.pdf)…
