NEW YORK, Oct. 29 (UPI) -- A new no-needle, no-scalpel vasectomy anesthetic technique was found to be safe and effective, says a U.S. study.
Dr. Marc Goldstein, of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center's Department of Urology, says that among the 1,391 patients anesthetized using the no-needle technique, the average visual analogue scale, or VAS, pain score for the injection was 1.65 of a maximum 10.
The average VAS score during the surgical procedure was 0.67. No adverse effects were associated with the technique, reported the study, authored by Dr. Ronald Weiss of the University of Ottawa School of Medicine, along with NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell's Goldstein and Dr. Philip Shihua Li.
"One straightforward benefit of eliminating needles is that people don't like needles," says Goldstein. "In conjunction with no-scalpel vasectomy, developed in China and introduced by me in the U.S. in 1985, no-needle vasectomy helps reduce men's fear of the procedure and represents the next step in the evolution of minimally invasive vasectomy techniques."
