World-class safety syringes are priced higher than conventional (unsafe) syringes. But it is shortsighted—and erroneous—to simply compare the purchase price of the safety syringe to that of the conventional syringe. A much more realistic approach should include the cost of tests to see if accidental needlestick injury victims acquire a bloodborne disease as a result of the injury. In addition, the cost of safe disposal of the syringe should be included.

Bloodborne diseases are transmitted from one person to another in different ways. Unfortunately, a very efficient method of transmission is with a syringe that is reused or that causes an accidental needlestick injury (NSI). In either case, blood from a patient (which may contain one or more of a host of bloodborne pathogens such as hepatitis or HIV) can contaminate the bloodstream of either another patient or someone else (such as a healthcare worker), often transmitting a serious—perhaps fatal—disease.

Upon the completion of an injection with a VanishPoint® syringe, the needle is automatically and instantly retracted from the patient into the barrel of the syringe. When this happens, the syringe is rendered non-reusable, and the contaminated needle is not available to prick the medical worker. When a healthcare worker uses a VanishPoint blood collection tube holder to draw blood, upon completion of the procedure the worker simply closes the attached end-piece, and this causes the needle to be retracted into the interior of the device, rendering it non-reusable and harmless.

Most of the HIV/AIDS pandemic traditionally has been attributed to sexual transmission. However, several recent thought-provoking articles in medical journals have presented evidence that much of the transmission actually is caused by dirty needles.^[1] Healthcare workers in the U.S. suffer an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 accidental needlestick injuries each year.^[2] This amounts to one NSI for about every 6,000 injections given with a conventional syringe.

Whenever a syringe is reused, or when a healthcare worker suffers an accidental NSI, it is imperative that tests be conducted to determine whether or not a bloodborne disease has been contracted. And often the tests must be repeated, because it may take several months before some pathogens can be detected. HIV sometimes lies dormant in the human body for up to three years. Such tests are expensive: in the U.S., the cost is approximately $3,000.^[3]

In instances where a bloodborne disease indeed has been contracted, treatment can be very expensive. Victims of NSI are usually frontline healthcare workers: doctors and nurses that the world can ill afford to lose. And, of course, there is no way to monetarily quantify human emotions such as fear and anxiety or potential damage to relationships.

The cost of testing must be taken into account mathematically in order to arrive at the true cost of a syringe. For each conventional syringe that is used for an injection, the approximate testing cost can be calculated by dividing $3,000 by 6,000. So each injection with a conventional syringe carries a hidden cost (the cost for disease testing of NSI victims) of about $0.50. However, VanishPoint syringes virtually eliminate any risk for accidental needlestick injury, so for each VanishPoint® syringe that is used for an injection, the testing cost is essentially zero.

Disposal costs must also be taken into account. This includes the cost of the sharps disposal box plus the cost of transportation to the incineration site and the cost of incineration. For a conventional (unsafe) syringe, the disposal cost is approximately $0.18 each. Activated VanishPoint syringes “nest” or pack together much more efficiently than conventional syringes. Any sharps disposal box will hold at least two times as many activated (retracted) VanishPoint syringes as conventional syringes.

The actual (or true) cost of a syringe can be calculated as follows:

purchase price + testing cost + disposal cost = actual cost of a syringe

Even if the purchase price of a VanishPoint syringe were five times as much as the purchase price of a conventional syringe, the actual cost of the conventional syringe would still be more expensive. Assuming a purchase price of $0.08 for a conventional syringe, the actual cost is calculated below:

$0.08 + $0.50 + $0.18 = $0.76

Assuming a purchase price of $0.40 for a VanishPoint syringe, the actual cost is:

$0.40 + $0.00 + $0.09 = $0.49

When these costs are taken into account, it actually is much less expensive to use a truly effective safety syringe than to use a conventional syringe (or one of the marginal so-called “safety” syringes that do not do an effective job of preventing both reuse and NSI). It not only makes good sense to use the safest product, it also makes good economic sense.