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Is your dental clinic hygienic enough?

wellbeing
Last Updated 08 May 2015, 15:45 IST

Dental clinics are a place where chances of acquiring HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis are very high. The instruments that are used are potential disease transmitters, if not properly sterilised. So, the next time you visit your dentist, ensure that the hospital meets high standards of safety:

Make sure the doctor has taken note of your patient history so s/he knows what instruments to use. Knowing the patients’ health condition allows for taking extra caution in handling the patient as well as the medical instruments, post the dental treatment.

The instruments have to be sterilised before using them on a patient.
Critical instruments like forceps, scalpels, bone chisels, scalers and surgical burs penetrate tissues and come in contact with blood streams. It is important that they be sterilised after every use via autoclaving (steam heating), dry heat or heat/chemical vapour.

Though semi-critical instruments like mirrors and reusable impression trays do not pierce through the tissues, they come in contact with the non-intact skin and are a possible source of infections. So they too need to be sterilised. However, instruments which cannot be sterilised should be exposed to high-level disinfectants to contain spread of infections.

It helps to know that non-critical instruments like X-ray heads, pulse oximeters and blood pressure cuffs have been cleaned with disinfectants.

If the instruments are being removed from pouches stored in UV chambers, it’s important to ensure that they do not get infected.

Keep in mind that equipment like needles, cartridges, glasses, drapes and gloves should be dumped after a single use. The more disposables are used, the less are the chances of cross-contamination among patients.

Enquire if the clinics autoclaves have undergone spore testing recently, as this is an indicator of how well the autoclaves are working.

(The author is senior consultant, Axiss Dental)

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(Published 08 May 2015, 15:45 IST)

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