22,000 Nottingham dental patients recalled due to risk of infection by blood borne viruses

Tefal said:
hep and hiv, can all be tested and results got back to you the same day for free, almost any city and town.
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I always thought things like HIV took months to be fully cleared from?

My ex was a dental assistant and one of her colleagues had a needle stick injury and it took a couple of weeks for her results to come back and even then she was told no unprotected sex for 6 months IIRC just in case.
 
tom_e said:
I always thought things like HIV took months to be fully cleared from?
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Months for expression of the virus after a needlestick injury or say unprotected sex but big labs can turn the actual test around in a day but if positive they often need to do another one to confirm.

Therefore, if you saw this dentist a year ago and was unlucky by now you would have sufficient virus in your system to test. If you saw him 2 days ago then yes you would be waiting around 3 months before they could safely give you the all clear.
 
Xordium said:
Months for expression of the virus after a needlestick injury or say unprotected sex but big labs can turn the actual test around in a day but if positive they often need to do another one to confirm.

Therefore, if you saw this dentist a year ago and was unlucky by now you would have sufficient virus in your system to test. If you saw him 2 days ago then yes you would be waiting around 3 months before they could safely give you the all clear.
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Ah that makes sense, thanks :)
 
Heard this on the news on the way into work this morning.
The CQC report that Xordium posted makes interesting reading, but although there are certainly some issues present, there is nothing within that to warrant a recall of patients.
In fact some things read well, they are above basic standards in several areas, but any failures, especially when CQC generally only does announced inspections are a bloody awful display.
The BBC website the interview with the chap doing movember from NHS is much more worrying.
Caught on camera on multiple occasions using disposable gloves, and the same equipment on patients. This might be examination mirrors and probes, or could be scaling equipment or more, it doesn't say. Either way this is horrific.
I couldn't imagine not changing my gloves. Unlike doctors, dentists are trained in cross infection control from virtually the first clinical experience they have. medical staff said training varies depending on site of medical school, and often first experiences in any form of cross infection control is when they first gown up for theatre observations, and a theatre nurse tears them apart a few times to train them how to scrub.
Dentists are different, having direct contact with every patient the encounter. Hand washing and hand hygiene are the basic and first line of protection from cross contamination, and cross infection.
It is shocking to see this violated at all.
Reuse of gloves is insane, actually insane, for your own personal safety, and for your patients.
The same with instruments, I couldn't imagine reusing an instrument, even a mirror on two child siblings, just no, impossible, never. Why the hell would you? Especially given that you have a bloody decontamination room set aside, and have even went to the bother of getting a washer disinfector in addition to your sterilisers. (HTM01-05 doesn't enforce washer disinfectors in England currently, in Norn Iron it is a requirement as part of our PEL subset of HTM01-05)

I am somewhat surprised they can't narrow down the list of patients, unless he has stated, or staff currently working have stated he always worked this way, and never changed his gloves.
 
The scary thing was before it came out who it was and whilst I was tracking down who it was (which is why I was careful when I worded that post so not as to say who it was but just saying look at this) was I thought it would be a simple look at the dates and see the standout suspension. But no I had to go through a lot of name to find the right one. The amount of 18 months suspensions in 1 month was very very very worrying. Interesting pattern on who was getting suspended compared to the make-up of all dentists too not that I should go there knowing what these forums are like!
 
Aye you shouldn't go there, especially when the GDC tell us it isn't newly qualified or foreign dentists who make up the bulk of the suspensions. They stopped short of saying it was home grown dentists with 'funny' names.
GDC registration fees are going up 55% this year, as they don't have a clinical lead based investigation approach, any complaint is viewed the same, and there is basically no triaging system currently, they claim an act of law will allow them to change this, but no such changes are billed currently. Anyway enough of my rumblings with the GDC.

There are 47000 registered dentists in the UK apparently.
Reusing gloves and instruments should be happening by ZERO of them.

There are major issues with recalling patients over a 30 year history also. That is reasonably insane from the NHS England. It'll cost about £2 million pounds to screen them all. Made worse if someone who was treated lets say anywhere from 7-30 years ago tests positive for Hep B or Hep C. What can be said to these people? Did they already have it? Have they caught it since? There isn't actually any treatment anyway? It isn't a kneejerk response as it has been clearly thought through, but you'd have thought there might have been some analysis that could be done to suggest at what point screening backwards might prove useful.
 
LOAM said:
Filmed secretly not washing hands and not sterilising equipment between patients. .
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What's worrying is he's just the one that was filmed.

What about all the ones that do that to this day and haven't been filmed.

I guess it's not something most people think about when they go to the dentist. I know when I go I don't ever think "Hey are his hands clean and have the instruments been sterlised"

You just assume they have.....My dentist wears gloves but if he's using the same gloves all day then the only thing that's "protected" are his hands :D
 
Does your dentist not put the gloves on in front of you, after he has seated you, and has chatted to you about what's going to happen today?
Box on wall, bring patient in, chat to patient, tell patient what you're going to do.
Hand hygiene, put on gloves, perform procedure.
Dump ppe into clinical waste, hand hygiene, chat to patient.
Patient leaves, then nurse and dentist perform between patient procedures.

It is a simplified version of what actually happens, but 20-30 times a day, its an easy process to train and repeat.

This isn't surgical scrubbing, dentistry isn't like a theatre operation, we do not work within a sterile field, your mouth contains more bacteria and species of bacteria than your arse does, but the instruments and hands going into that dirty field shouldn't be adding to the mass already present.
 
Hikari Kisugi said:
Made worse if someone who was treated lets say anywhere from 7-30 years ago tests positive for Hep B or Hep C. Did they already have it?
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I guess what they can do is spot a pattern in any positives and ascertain a degree of certainty from what they find. If they find (which is more than likely) say HepC1a/b then they can't say a lot but if they had one of the rare types in a cluster around a date then it would be a smoking gun.
 
Mynight said:
Bet even though it's less than 24 hours it feels like an eternity though.
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The HIV test is instant, go in price your finger mix it in the test kit one dot your on two dots oh dear.


tom_e said:
I always thought things like HIV took months to be fully cleared from?

My ex was a dental assistant and one of her colleagues had a needle stick injury and it took a couple of weeks for her results to come back and even then she was told no unprotected sex for 6 months IIRC just in case.
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That's because she will have had to wait several weeks to be tested the teats only work after about 6 weeks.


usually they just put you straight on HIV med post exposure if you ever have an unprotected one night stand go tell the clinic an they give you a post exposure course of anti HIV meds
 
Hikari Kisugi said:
Does your dentist not put the gloves on in front of you etc
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I made an Award winning DVD on Aseptic Techniques and used to teach hand washing techniques but I must admit I have NEVER looked at what a Dentist is up to. I suppose I just take it for granted.

Anyway, it's times like this that I'm glad my job isn't in Nottingham.
 
Hikari Kisugi said:
Does your dentist not put the gloves on in front of you,
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No he has them on already, it's something I've noticed.

And as I said I've never actually given much thought as to whether he's had the gloves on all day or just put them on.

I just don't think too much about things like that, it's just things you assume or take for granted.

In the same way that when I get a takeaway/ go to restaurant etc I don't think about whether they washed their hands, whether the utensils used were clean, whether they dropped it on the floor etc

If I started analyzing everything I don't think I'd go anywhere, or do anything
 
holymonk said:
Id be more concerned about vCJD.
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Why the chances of vCJD getting from this are near to impossible. Even people who've had whole units of blood from known carriers haven't got it - I think the actual cases of people getting it from transfusion are in the lower single digits (globally).
 
Police are looking into whether ex-Nottingham Girls' High School pupil Amy Duffield died as a result of the treatment of dentist Desmond D'Mello.

Miss Duffield died in August 22 last year after suffering from flu-like symptoms and heart palpitations.
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Source

Think this may be about to go criminal. In a way I hope they discover she didn't die because of this.
 
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