Modern Dentistry devotes a great deal of time and effort on ensuring the highest levels of hygiene and decontamination. We have taken several special measures to maximise your safety:

1.  Centralised Instrument Management 

Unlike the majority of Dental Practices, we have implemented a system where dirty instruments are placed directly into a sealed transit tub in which they are taken in batches to the decontamination rook.  In this room they are mechanically scrubbed, cleaned in an ultrasonic bath, cleaned in a washer/disinfector ( a bit like a dishwasher, but much hotter ) then sterilised in a steam autoclave.  Larger instruments are bagged sterile sealed bags and instruments are then returned to their treatment room in a clean tub.  This ensures that rather than the dental nurse having to handle potentially contaminated instruments between and around other patients, she will only ever handle sterile instruments removing any potential risks.

2.  Scrubs

We decided some time ago to switch to scubsets instead of just tunics over our outdoor clothes.  This means primarily that scrubs stay within the practice at all times and we are always clean.  If one of the clinical team suspects they have been contaminated in the course of a treatment, we have a staff shower and fresh scrubs always available.

3.  Gloves, Masks and Visors

All clinical staff wear fresh surgical gloves for each pateient, this one really should go without saying but unfortunately some colleagues are still behind the times in this area.

4.  Biofilm Management

Our modern delivery systems ( dental chairs) have lots of small tubing which carry water to either cool rotary instruments or to the triple syringe (air and water spray).  Traditionally these were supplied from mains water but unfortunately this is not actually very clean.  Mains water left in small pipes say overnight can actually strar to form films of bacteria and moulds on the inside of the tubes.  Any water flowing through the tubes will therefore be passing through a reservoir of contamination and then into the patient’s mouth!