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

Mine always puts on fresh gloves as I'm entering the room and has the sterilisation equipment on display so if you want to check up on it you can see he is following procedures.

With the amount of dentists being bought up and the squeeze put on to maximise profits I can see health and safety taking a back seat until someone dies at which point its all hang wringing and investigations :|
 
holymonk said:
Id be more concerned about vCJD.
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Strange statement.
Very strange statement.
No technique for sterilisation of such a prion.
Steam sterilisation at 134 degrees doesn't get rid of it, washer disinfectors are believed to helpful due to dilution effect, but currently we have no way to eliminate it.

So even if he was doing everything right, which he wasn't, there is no point in worrying about something you can't stop.

Most dental equipment which contacts 'nerve' tissue is single use and disposed of as single use. There is the remote chance that a probe or similar could get contaminated, but if it was, it will remain so, even after sterilisation.

Its like the NHS chap who proposed that dental drills be made single use to prevent vCJD spread, until it was pointed out that the twenty pound filling was being being done with a two thousand pound drill. Well done civil servant. Always best to take advice from someone with no clinical background.
 
Xordium said:
Yer, but the one you linked on here had the nurse contaminating the top-right corner of her field if I remember correctly! :p
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That was probably a very early shot because every scene was done over and over again until 100s (and I mean 100s) of Clinicians couldn't spot anything wrong. Every time I did a 'Final' DVD it was torn apart until I had the final approval exactly on the last day of my employment. I left with about 2 hours work left so with permission I came in the following day to finish off at my cost but had to have a chaperone even though I'd worked there for 2 years - red tape and all that :D
 
Rroff said:
Mine always puts on fresh gloves as I'm entering the room and has the sterilisation equipment on display so if you want to check up on it you can see he is following procedures.

With the amount of dentists being bought up and the squeeze put on to maximise profits I can see health and safety taking a back seat until someone dies at which point its all hang wringing and investigations :|
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What do you mean has the sterilisation equipment on display?
This was adequate until a few years ago, but HTM01-05 is now introduced, and decontamination should be taking place in a separate room from any other activity.
Basically rules changes and instead of sterilisation being done in the corner of the dental surgery, as it was for years, with no one dying, rules were changed to make dental surgeries the same classification as small hospitals and the introduction of an LDU within each building.
 
Hikari Kisugi said:
What do you mean has the sterilisation equipment on display?
This was adequate until a few years ago, but HTM01-05 is now introduced, and decontamination should be taking place in a separate room from any other activity.
Basically rules changes and instead of sterilisation being done in the corner of the dental surgery, as it was for years, with no one dying, rules were changed to make dental surgeries the same classification as small hospitals and the introduction of an LDU within each building.
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Up until fairly recently they (still) had the quartz bead style sterilizers on the bench by the dentist though those have now disappeared entirely, I did notice between my last two visits (since new owners took it over) they'd started to move a lot of it out but they still have (in use) autoclaves in the dentist's rooms.

(Not really thought about it but does look like they've recently been in the process of setting up a (EDIT: Proper) LDU).

EDIT: Not sure about if its still inuse actually - the dental nurse was getting equipment out of it either at the end of last year or early this year when I went but don't remember it being used when I went back in Oct this year.
 
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Hikari Kisugi said:
Strange statement.
Very strange statement.
No technique for sterilisation of such a prion.
Steam sterilisation at 134 degrees doesn't get rid of it, washer disinfectors are believed to helpful due to dilution effect, but currently we have no way to eliminate it.

So even if he was doing everything right, which he wasn't, there is no point in worrying about something you can't stop.

Most dental equipment which contacts 'nerve' tissue is single use and disposed of as single use. There is the remote chance that a probe or similar could get contaminated, but if it was, it will remain so, even after sterilisation.

Its like the NHS chap who proposed that dental drills be made single use to prevent vCJD spread, until it was pointed out that the twenty pound filling was being being done with a two thousand pound drill. Well done civil servant. Always best to take advice from someone with no clinical background.
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You don't half spout some drivel. I'd suggest reading current guidance. WHO would be a good start.
 
holymonk said:
You don't half spout some drivel. I'd suggest reading current guidance. WHO would be a good start.
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Expand pleasse.

-edit
175 cases of vCJD were reported in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (United Kingdom), and 49 cases in other countries from October 1996 to March 2011.
Figures from WHO.
I still do not see how this should factor to make it more worrying than blood bourne viruses as you originally stated.
Prions can't be easily sterilised, as I said.
Dilution apparently helps from washer disinfectors, as I said.
Steam sterilisers do nothing to prions, as I said.
Where is the drivvel? Expand on what part of WHO you think I should be reading for dental disinfection when we have a specific HTM document for that, with subsequent PELs.
 
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@ Hikari - I suspect he is a popular science reader and read a paragraph on prions when they were in the news a few years back and now thinks he is an expert. We have a few on here like that.
 
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