No more needles: Painless laser injection could make jabs a thing of the past
- South Korea team creates laser that uses ‘just the right amount of force’ to inject medicine
- Future jabs could be as painful as ‘a puff of fresh air’
Some people hate them, some people fear them, and the rest of us probably don’t enjoy them that much.
But needle injections could finally become medical history, after scientists found a way to use lasers to take the ‘ouch!’ out of a medicine jab.
The process, developed at Seoul National University in South Korea, could revolutionise how we receive annual flu shots, childhood immunisations, and other treatments that involve piercing the skin with a needle.
The laser-based system blasts microscopic jets of drugs directly into the skin, and the creators say it is as gentle and painless as ‘being hit with a puff of air’.
The system uses an ‘yttrium aluminum garnet’ laser to propel a tiny, precise stream of medicine with just the right amount of force.
This type of laser is commonly used by dermatologists, particularly for facial esthetic treatments.
Now Jack Yoh, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, has combined the laser with a small adaptor that contains the drug to be delivered, in liquid form, plus a chamber containing water that acts as a ‘driving’ fluid.
