S’pore Dentists Have Developed ‘Painless’ Anaesthesia Using Microneedle Patch


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Needles.

I can feel a number of you getting scared now.

GIF: Giphy.com

Me too, guys. Me too.

It’s definitely better for me now but all the way till secondary school, needles freaked me out as much as my science grade.

Though I feel a lot better knowing it’s more common than I thought.

Luckily, a certain group of dentists also know this and have come up with a solution.

Pain Go Away

Come another day again…or never.

According to The Straits Times, researchers at the National Dental Research Institute Singapore have developed an alternative for administering anaesthesia.

The answer: a microneedle patch

Example of a microneedle patch for flu. Image: medicalxpress

I’m already relieved by how much less scary it looks.

Research fellow Razina Seeni Syed mentioned that people are often scared of dental procedures due to the possibility of pain.

Image: Meme

The shorter needles on the patch mean that patients would feel little to no pain when inserted into their gums.

Dentists expect the patch to help save time it takes to manage the patient’s anxiety and indirectly increase the clinic efficiency.

Image: Giphy

That’s really smart, honestly.

The patch is really small (1cm diameter) and the microneedles create small holes in the gum.

After that, the anaesthetic agents are delivered into the nerves in the jaw bone with the sensation eventually reaching the teeth.


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In fact, it’s actually faster to use the patch as it would only take five minutes to complete the anaesthesia process as opposed to 10 minutes normally.

Image: memegenerator

The team behind this idea hopes to get it out on the market by 2023.

Time to casually delay the pulling of my other wisdom teeth then.

I’m looking forward to this invention honestly. I’d definitely feel a lot less shaken up if I didn’t see a giant needle enter my mouth before my tooth was pulled.

Hope to see more information about this soon.


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But then again, by 2023, maybe aliens have already landed on Yishun and provided us with another solution. Who knows.