These days with the threat of COVID-19, you may be worried about venturing out even for the essentials like grocery shopping. Unfortunately, you never know who or what has come into contact with the carts or products you’ll be touching, putting you at a higher risk of infection. However, one place you don’t have to be concerned about visiting is your dental office.
Believe it or not, compared to many other locations, dental practices are some of the cleanest places you can be. Long before COVID-19 became an issue, your dental team followed strict requirements for keeping the operatories safe and clean, and these high standards can help you have peace of mind as you receive essential dental care during this crisis.
Practicing Hand Hygiene
Your dental team has always prioritized healthy practices when it comes to hand hygiene. Everyone washes or sanitizes their hands before putting on gloves and after taking them off. They also never use the same pair of gloves to treat more than one patient, which means that your risk of cross contamination is quite low. Because of the COVID-19 crisis, you’ll likely see additional hand-sanitizing stations set up throughout the practice for both the dental staff and patients to use more frequently to reduce this risk even further.
Wearing Personal Protective Equipment
When you’ve visited your dentist before, you no doubt noticed that they were wearing extra protective equipment, which is shortened to PPE. Gloves, a mask, and eyewear stop saliva and droplet aerosols from a potentially infected patient from reaching their (the dentist’s) face and spreading illness. On the other hand, these items also help protect the patient from a potentially infected dental team member. These simple items of PPE, which were already being used in daily practice, can go a long way toward slowing the spread of COVID-19 while allowing patients to get the care they need.
Following Sterilization Protocols
Many of the dental tools and devices used in the practice come in direct contact with a patient’s saliva, blood, or mucus, so they have to sterilized using heat to kill all bacteria. Even the little handheld mirror your dentist uses to examine your teeth undergoes this process after each use. In fact, blood pressure cuffs and other equipment that only comes into contact with your skin are cleaned using hospital grade sanitizing solutions. In other cases, disposable plastic covers on equipment are replaced between patients to avoid contamination.
To provide even more protection during the COVID-19 crisis, your dental office may take additional precautions to ensure everyone’s safety. Before this pandemic began and after it ends, dental practices will continue to uphold high safety and health protocols to protect everyone involved—staff and patients alike.
About the Practice
Prime Dentistry is proud to have two highly experienced and compassionate dentists on staff. Dr. Dhiren Ahir is a graduate from the New York University College of Dentistry and have years of advanced training under his belt. During this time, we want the community to know that we are here to help however we can. If you have questions about how Prime Dentistry and our dentists are handling the COVID-19 crisis, you can contact us by clicking here.
