For your dental implant supplies to be safe, they need to be handled and stored hygienically. The act of disinfecting, cleaning and sterilizing equipment and instruments is like a battle against infection. How dentists handle equipment after reprocessing is very important.

Instrument handling

The way a dentist handles instruments matters a lot. It isn’t uncommon to see practices manhandle dental instruments. The result of manhandling can be damaged or non-sterile instruments. There is a little bit of abuse in the industry. An abuse of sterilization paper, peel pouches, plastic pouches and so on. Clinical education managers and dental hygienists say that the abuse involves putting a lot of items in the peel pouch. This increases the chances of the instruments poking through and creating tears or holes. The best practice is to use pouches according to the instructions from manufacturers.

It is important not to overload it. The items should stream reach other items inside the package to sterilize it. If they are full then that will defeat the purpose. Mishandling extends to something as minor as team members touching the instruments without wearing gloves on their hands. You want to make sure that you are handling sterile items with clean hands and minimize touching them. If the instruments get bumped during transportation then the packaging will be perforated. It is therefore important to always use clean hands when handling the instruments and a transport container to get the instruments to the end location and not have them compromised in the process. Dental implant companies provide guidelines on how to handle dental supplies to avoid contamination.

Let them dry

Instruments don’t get ready for use immediately they complete their sterilization cycle. The proper protocol requires that the instruments be completely dry before they are handled. This is a problem across the whole industry and needs to be addressed promptly. It is not even in dentistry but the whole medical industry. People are always in a hurry and they do not have enough of particular items. A good example is the dental hand-piece which is expensive and they only have a limited number of them. This particular load is finished in the sterilizer of the dental instruments so they know that the heat and steam of the sterilization process are concluded and they open it up. It is easy to pull out all the items that are wet and hot.

This allows microorganisms to penetrate the pouch from the hands of the handler, from the surfaces that you might put the pouches on. We look at it and we would see that the pouch is intact and that there are no holes. So we think it is safe but the truth is that they are not safe, they are porous. If it is still hot and wet, it allows tiny contamination.

When using sterilizers for dental implant supplies  , it is important to know the make and model of the sterilizer you are using. The make and model dictate when to remove the instruments. It is therefore important to refer to the manufacturer’s guidelines.