It varies on person (including mental state), needle size, and nurse/operator skill. I suspect one bad experience with a needle can prime someone for a poor response in follow up experiences.
If the nurse/technician is good and you are lucky, you get pinched at the first try and the extractions is fast. If they can't find the vein, you may get pinched twice or more times. (It is also difficult when the patients is too young, or too old, or dehydrated.)
Stupid thing but I had to inject my wife for months and I hated the whole thing. Where, what angle, what pressure to apply and then when I was 'in' taking care not to move or cause more pain and blood. Shaking or slight tremor = pain. Depending on the size and action of the 'pump' I was always putting her through some new pain everyday. And then I nicked myself several times, even with the modern home-injection kits for noobz... Mronths of this, I don't feel better poking anyone. I should have got trained.
So, yeah, if we find a way to do without nurses, or teach properly the thing to everyone, OK...
You must have had a better placement of the needle.
The one time I had an IV the nurse "missed" inserting it into my forearm, pinched a muscle or some such, and then had to fall back to attaching it to my wrist. I couldn't use my left hand the entire time it was attached and for a few days afterwards.
Also, doable aside, I'm guessing you'd agree it's not recommended.
Strongly disagree; this is a really useful tool, even for experienced phlebotomists.
They recently got one of these at a clinic someone very close to me attends regularly. Even skilled nurses can struggle to find usable veins when treating folks who’ve had many needles put in over the years; in those cases using this saves a great deal of time and pain for everyone involved.
> leads me to believe that perhaps this reporting isn't as balanced as it could be.
That's probably a valid point. Media loves a little guy against huge industry story.
> in several cases, needles detached and were left “stuck in the arms of patients.”
More data needed to make any assessment. We need to compare failure rates of the retractable device with existing devices. We also need to adjust for the skill level of the people using the devices. There's probably an adjustment needed for the patients too.
Why do people always highlight needles so much? The biggest concern with needles would be proper sterilization and no-reuse, but other than that, what are some other concerns that would motivate us to do away with needles? We are bags of fluid and veins, so needles seem like the best solution to poke and inject?
As an intravenous heroin user, I regularly inject into my veins and the pain, while not non-existent, is pretty minimal, unless I cannot access the vein due to thrombosis/collapse. This has always worried me, since it can take me half an hour to place a shot, and in hospital I have had multiple nurses and doctors try to insert a cannula over similar lengths of time. In a life threatening situation I have often wondered what would happen when the EMT could not get access. The existence of IO needles is interesting, therefore, since on IVDA patients they will still work - I just wonder how common a piece of kit they are in UK ambulances and A&E departments?
Their machine is really impressive. I think for a medical device a needle has a great advantage from the safety perspective. You can make a needle that will never penetrate too deep into the brain because it is physically too short. Not so much for a laser capable of burning through skin which, if there is a bug in the controller would burn through the soft tissue in a matter of seconds.
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