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PRST STD US POSTAGE PAID BOISE, ID PERMIT 411
(440) 483-1003
I N S I D E 5825 Landerbrook Drive, Suite 124 Mayfield Heights, OH 44124
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Challenges of Today Are Your Teeth Changing? Our Patients Say It Best Celebrate Our Exceptional Community: Dr. Holly Witchey Springtime Cacio e Pepe Is It Safe to Go to the Dentist?
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idea that blood and all bodily fluids that could contain blood might be contaminated and must be treated as infectious. These regulatory guidelines emphasized infection control protocols and have been updated over the years as both technology and medical understanding have improved. The most recent guidelines from 2016 are the gold standard for infection control. These guidelines include the use of personal protective equipment for dental personnel, the requirement that practices must have an individual trained in infection prevention on staff, and the mandate that all equipment must be approved by the Food and Drug Administration and cleaned with chemical germicides registered with the Environmental Protection Agency as “hospital disinfectant.” You may be concerned right now, but rest assured that when you come in for your appointment, our team has taken every measure to protect your health. We are staying up to date and will continue to use the best and most effective measures to keep patients safe. This includes taking extra time to thoroughly sanitize all the equipment in the office between each patient. It may also include closing the office and rescheduling appointments, if such a thing is deemed necessary.
Dental Sanitation and COVID-19 How Dentists Keep Patients Safe
Even before the outbreak of COVID-19, infection control was a huge priority for dental offices. Every piece of equipment you see at the office, from the chair you sit in to the sickle probe used to remove plaque from your teeth, is thoroughly sanitized after every use. However, this wasn’t always the case. Archaeological evidence shows that humans have been operating on each other’s teeth since 7000 B.C. However, dentistry didn’t become its own profession until the 18th century. It would take another 200 years before dentists recognized the possibility of cross infection between patients and dental practitioners. The first dental cabinets
equipped with “sterilizers” weren’t available until the early 1900s. These early attempts at sterilization were far below today’s standards. The process of sterilizing equipment was slightly more rigorous in the 1970s, but regulation was still lacking. By the 1980s, only 30% of dentists wore gloves, masks, or gowns. It wasn’t until the AIDS epidemic that infection control in dentistry was reformed. Panic over infectious diseases in general prompted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to publish its first set of comprehensive dental infection control guidelines. This included adopting “universal precautions” based on the
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