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

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 the efficacy and utility of these types of needles currently on the market.

The authors evaluated four types of dental safety needles and syringes for clinical acceptability. Two of these devices were deemed unacceptable owing to inherent features identified during the bench test. The remaining two devices were clinically evaluated using an 11-statement survey. Senior dental students completed the survey at one, two, four, five, six and eight weeks from introduction of the devices to a dental school clinic. Junior 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 completion of a final survey at 52 weeks.

The survey results indicated increasing user dissatisfaction with nine of the safety device features evaluated over the 52 weeks. At eight weeks, 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 determine statistical significance of the change in injury rate, but it did show that needlesticks continue to occur in spite of the use of safety devices.

None of the safety devices tested successfully passed the clinical evaluation. Continued evaluation is necessary to ensure that effective safety devices are available to dental practitioners.

Evaluators had significant concerns about the usability of dental safety needles and their ability to adapt to using them effectively. Results of a review and bench tests indicate that the devices tested are no safer than traditional anesthetic needles.