A preliminary report on the testing of the possibility of the in-house produced circuit for destroying the used evacuated two-ended needle, an invention

• Main Authors: V Wiwanitkit, S Yungsuk, W Waenlor
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Prince of Songkla University 2002-12-01
• Series: Journal of Health Science and Medical Research (JHSMR)
• Subjects: needle scrapper
• Online Access: https://www.jhsmr.org/index.php/jhsmr/article/view/428
• ISSN: 2586-9981; 2630-0559

Despite the well-known dangers of bloodborne infection, uncounted hours of education on safe work practices and improved systems for needle disposal, many health care workers injure themselves with used needles every year. Needle stick injury is a common accident in medical practice. Currently, the recapping is not recommended. The needle scrapper is a device produced in order to reduce the risk of health care worker to blood-borne transmission from needle stick injury. However, there are only a few machines in use because of the high cost. The in-house production of such machines could solve this problem. In this study, we report our experience on the testing of the prototype circuit for destroying the used evacuated two-ended needle. We developed a prototype of the needle scrapper by using the simple circuit composing with the Alternative Current (AC) electricity source (home electricity 220 volts) and a transformer. The input is 220 volts, AC, 50 Hz. The output is 9 volt, AC, 1 ampere. The needle was placed as the bridge to complete the circuit. We performed our trial by testing the destruction of the needles. It is of interest that, after applying of one end of the needle in the prototype, the needle is heated and becomes red. However, we still detect the problem in real use with the melting of the rubber sleeve on the other ended of the evacuated needle. Therefore, we have to correct this problem to complete our invention in the future.