Painless laser needles may replace the hypodermic kind

The future looks good for those who are afraid of needles.

Resarchers have come up with a laser injector that can inject drugs painlessly into the skin.

The laser, commonly used by dermatologists in facial aesthetic treatments, uses water to inject an incredibly thin stream of medicine into the skin.

Red Orbit said that the person only feels a puff of air during injection.

“The impacting jet pressure is higher than the skin tensile strength and thus causes the jet to smoothly penetrate into the targeted depth underneath the skin, without any splashback of the drug," said Jack Yoh, a professor of mechanical engineering at Seoul National University, reported Laser Focus World.

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“This is ideal for creating the jet and significantly improves skin penetration.”

The device was tested on guinea pig skin and showed that the drug was delivered just millimerters into the skin without any damage.

“The laser-driven microjet injector can precisely control dose and the depth of drug penetration underneath the skin,” Yoh said, reported an NBC News affiliate.

“Control via laser power is the major advancement over other devices, I believe.”

The findings and the description of the invention were published in the Optical Society’s journal Optics Letters.

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