Dental safety needles' effectiveness: Results of a one-year evaluation

Background. Some government agencies,; and state legislatures recently have passed regulations mandating the use of safety-enhanced devices, including dental anesthetic safety needles. Little information exists, however, on t he efficacy and utility of these types of needles currently on the market. Methods. The authors evaluated four types of dental safety needles and syri nges for clinical acceptability. Two of these devices were deemed unaccepta ble owing to inherent features identified during the bench test. The remain ing two devices were clinically evaluated using an 11-statement survey. Sen ior dental students completed the survey at one, two, four, five, six and e ight weeks from introduction of the devices to a dental school clinic. Juni or dental students joined the senior students using one of the devices for the last six months of the evaluation and joined the senior students in com pletion of a final survey at 52 weeks. Results. The survey results indicated increasing user dissatisfaction with nine of the safety device features evaluated over the 52 weeks. At eight we eks, use of one of the two devices was discontinued owing to poor clinical performance. A review of the blood exposure incident reports that routinely are collected following an exposure incident revealed a small increase in exposures involving anesthetic needles, The sample size was too small to de termine statistical significance of the change in injury rate, but it did s how that needlesticks continue to occur in spite of the use of safety devic es. Conclusions, None of the safety devices tested successfully passed the clin ical evaluation. Continued evaluation is necessary to ensure that effective safety devices area available to dental practitioners. Clinical Implications. Evaluators had significant concerns about the usabil ity of dental safety needles and their ability to adapt to using them effec tively. Results of a review and bench tests indicate that the devices teste d are no safer than traditional anesthetic needles.