Question to Dentists?

What are the standard procedures that dentists use to prevent transmission of blood born pathagons (Hepatitis, hiv, etc...) from one patient to another. Are all the items the dentist uses sterilized between patients? How are they sterilized ? Is there only one set of tools that is used everytime?

It takes at least 45 min or so to adequetly sterilize, so most dentist have 3 or even more sets of every conceivable kind of set up. Steam autoclave is the standard of care - instruments are "cooked" at 275 deg w/ steam pressure for about 45 min. Before this, they are usually placed in an ultrasonic cleaner w/ an enzymatic solution to remove any blood or saliva that's still sitting on them.

There are SOME instruments you can't autoclave - plastic-ish things and the like. These are wiped down w/ some kind of anti-mocrobial wipe (glorified Clorox) or are sprayed w/ a phenol or gluteraldehyde.

A good dental office will do monthly or even weekly testing to make sure the autoclave is working correctly. The standard here is tuberculum spores. If the autoclave kills those, they kill everything else. There are test strips for this and some dentists send their strips to a monitoring service through the mail.

The chair and other parts of the room are likewise sprayed or wiped. This latter process doens't kill, say, TB but that's ok, since the CHAIR isn't going in your mouth and you're no more likely to catch something in that situation that you are from just passing coins to the cashier at the coffeeshop etc...

Yes ever thing is sterilized and some dentist have two sets of toots and the are sterilized my a power washer ... (small one ) it is steam . I hope this helps

everything is steralized mostly using autoclave and there is always more then one sat of tools. there are alot of precuations taken so it isnt something to be worried about. I'm a dental hygiene student and they stress infection control like its going out of style.

Here you go:

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml...