An in vitro investigation of the effect of bevel design on the penetration and withdrawal forces of dental needles

A selection of abstracts of clinically relevant papers from other journals. The abstracts on this page have been chosen and edited by John R. Radford.

Abstract

Generally, this novel dental needle tip was superior.

Main

Steele AC, German MJ et al. J Dent 2013; 41: 164–169

The atraumatic needle tip that is standard for intra-oral use, has a bevel that is more rounded than earlier needle designs. It 'has the action of pushing between, rather than cutting through tissue fibres'. This study compared the forces required for the standard atraumatic needle and a novel asymmetrical bevel design needle (both 30 gauge) to penetrate and withdraw from 1) a 0.4 mm polyurethane membrane, and 2) and a polyvinyl siloxane block. For the novel design of needle, the forces were significantly less when the angles of insertion were 30° and 150°, but at 90° angle of penetration the forces were higher compared with the standard atraumatic needle (polyurethane membrane model). In addition, the novel asymmetrical bevel design required less force to insert into the polyvinyl siloxane block, tested at 90° angle of penetration only, and the withdrawal forces were less.