Dental Sterilization – How do you sterilize your instruments at Murfreesboro Family Dentistry?

We want to make sure that we keep up to date with the best types of dental sterilization procedures to ensure that our patients are safe. This means they are not exposed to any type of bacteria, viruses, any type of bugs. So, we use an ultrasonic cleaner to clean our instruments. After that we thoroughly dry the instruments in an autoclave. This steams and pressure cleans the instruments to make sure that all type of bacteria, viruses, spores, and the like, disappear.

We also clean all of the hard and soft surfaces in the office to promote a healthy environment. And make sure that they are up to the best standards.

And you have some pretty high tech equipment in the office. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

One of the biggest things that we have is a drier, which is not typical in many offices. And that’s really just the newest thing to ensure that our instruments can be properly autoclaved so that all bugs are dead by the time that the sterilization is complete.

A lot of that equipment is touch less, right?

Correct. So, we want to make sure that through the process that we don’t possibly move bugs from what we’re touching to the countertops and to all of the areas that we are used to clean them. So, most of our equipment is touch less. Also, in dentistry, there is a big push for offices to be what’s called OSHA compliant. And this calendar year, within the last about eight months, we have been to four continuing education meetings just making sure that we’re up to date on the best standards, and using the best products available. One of our primary goals is to take great care to ensure all of our office surfaces are clean and decontaminated between patients.