Water Line Disinfection
One of the problems encountered with dental units has to do with the fine water lines the instruments use (drill, air/water syringe, etc). With the very small inner diameter of these water lines, bacteria can build inside them and eventually break free only to end up in a patient’s mouth. As this has become a significant issue in dentistry, multiple ways of dealing with this have been developed. When Dr. Schau set up the office he picked dental units from Sirona that have a self-sanitizing feature (to our knowledge, the only dental unit on the market with this feature). On a continual basis, a low-level disinfectant (peroxide based and safe for the patient) is run through the lines to keep them bacteria free. On a monthly basis, all the lines get an added 24 hour flush with a full-strength dose of disinfectant to ensure the lines stay bacteria free with no biofilm. Just another way My Family Dentist has your best interests at heart. If you have any questions or concerns about any of our infection control procedures, please feel free to talk to any of our staff, or to Kym directly, as she is the individual in charge of overseeing our infection control measures.
State of the Art Sterilizers
All our sterilizers are state of the art and fully automated. This allows for better monitoring of the sterilization process and quick identification of any problems. In addition to sterilizer indicators with each load, we do daily, weekly, and monthly testing of our sterilizers to ensure they are working properly and that the instruments we use are safe, patient after patient. For added quality control, our weekly testing is done in-house with biological samples, and our monthly testing with biological samples are evaluated by a third party (provides the highest level of testing accuracy).
Bagged Instruments
Another thing you may notice during your visits is all our instruments are bagged in kits. Once sterilized and stored in proper bags, the instruments can remain sterile for up to 6 months. As this technique requires an increased number of instruments, many offices do not bag the majority of their instruments, and just store them in drawers or on shelves. Without bagging, however, instruments only remain sterile for up to 6 hours.