They are an irritating inevitability of many household tasks – particularly building flat-packed furniture.
For adults, removing a splinter is no big deal. But when it comes to children, it can be an ordeal – with your kid screaming in pain.
Now, one doctor has taken to TikTok to share a genius hack that whips the wood out in seconds, and is totally 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 that you’ll probably find at 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 so far garnered nearly 3 million views.
The video shows the mother using a plastic syringe with the tip snipped off to suck out the splinter in a matter of seconds.
‘You really just want the edge of the splinter. Line things up,’ Dr Figura commentates.
‘Suction it out…wow it’s gone!’
Plastic syringes are no doubt in many Americans’ medicine cabinets.
However, they are available to buy for less than $5 at pharmacies such as CVS.
Some childrens’ medicines, bought over the counter, come with a free syringe to help parents easily dispense the right amount of liquid into a kid’s mouth.
Syringes for children’s medicines are available from pharmacies, priced as low as $5
Parents in the UK have previously shared a similar hack, using the plastic syringe that comes free with a child’s liquid painkiller.
One Facebook post, written by a mother based in the North of England and telling of the trick was shared more than 65,000 times.
Experts recommend extracting a splinter as soon as you notice it.
This is because delaying the extraction can both increase the risk of infection and the likelihood of scar tissue growing around the splinter, making it more difficult to remove.
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