Doctor Reveals Genius, Painless Way to Remove a Splint Using a Medicine Cabinet
They are an annoying inevitability in many household tasks, especially when building flat-packed furniture.
For adults, removing a splinter is not a problem. But when it comes to children, it can be an ordeal, with your child screaming in pain.
Now a doctor has taken to TikTok to share a genius hack that gets the wood out in seconds and is completely pain-free.
A video posted by Dr. Myro Figura – who has 620,000 followers on the app – shows a mother removing a splinter using a handy tool you’ll probably find in the back of your medicine cabinet.
Dr. Figura, an anesthesiologist based at UCLA, endorsed the hack. “Where was this trick when I was growing up,” he said in the clip, which has been viewed nearly three million times to date.
The video shows the mother using a plastic syringe with the tip cut off to suck out the splinter in seconds.
‘Actually, you just want the edge of the splinter. Get things straight,” says Dr. Figura.
“Suck it out…wow, it’s gone!”
Plastic syringes are undoubtedly in the medicine cabinets of many Americans.
However, they can be purchased for less than $5 at pharmacies such as CVS.
Some pediatric over-the-counter medications come with a free syringe, making it easy for parents to squirt the right amount of liquid into a child’s mouth.
Syringes for children’s medications are available at pharmacies and cost as little as $5
Parents in Britain have previously shared a similar hack, using the plastic syringe that comes free with the liquid painkiller for children.
One Facebook post, written by a mother from northern England, detailing the trick was shared more than 65,000 times.
Experts recommend removing a splinter as soon as you notice it.
This is because delaying the extraction can increase both the risk of infection and the chance of scar tissue growing around the splinter, making it more difficult to remove.