Device Makes Visit To Dentist Less Painful Computer-Controlled Needle Makes Injections Easier To Take

Jennifer Simon’s voice still quivers as she recalls childhood dental visits that sound like the torture scene in “Marathon Man.”

Her dentist - like the sadist played by Laurence Olivier in the movie - pierced her mouth with a harpoon-like needle, drilled before the Novocain took effect and called her a baby when she cried out in pain.

“He was creepy,” said Simon, 27. “When I was an adult I didn’t go for 3-1/2 years, until my parents and my boyfriend said they weren’t going to celebrate my birthday if I didn’t.” Now, she says her dental phobia was cured after her new dentist used a new computer-controlled “painless” needle.

Milestone Scientific Inc. says its $1,000 device will put more people in dentists’ chairs. And because it’s precise enough to work on a single tooth, it doesn’t send patients away with the telltale droopy cheeks and muffled speech of a visit to the dentist.

“It really is actually painless,” Simon said. “You don’t feel the needle going in at all.”

Her dentist, Michael Krochak, explained that what hurts is not the needle prick itself, but the feeling of having anesthetic forced into tissues faster than it can be absorbed.

The Wand, as the Milestone system is called, starts off with a drop of anesthetic to numb the needle site and delivers the rest at a slow, regular pace. It can numb a site as small as the area surrounding a single tooth, instead of half a patient’s mouth.

“I honestly believe that fear of dental injections will become a thing of the past,” Krochak said.

For dentists - and their patients - fear can be expensive.

It keeps some patients from getting routine check-ups. Others need more tending to before and after shots. By making injections quick and painless, the nation’s 135,000 dentists - who give an average of seven to 10 injections daily - can save enough time to squeeze in another patient per day, said Michael McGeehan, executive vice president of Livingston, N.J.-based Milestone.

Milestone, which plans to start selling the Wand nationally after introducing it at the American Dental Association convention in Washington Saturday, recently sold 50 to the University of Southern California School of Dentistry, which plans to use the Wand to train dentists and hygienists.