Sterilization and safety
Sterility is very important in our dental clinic: that’s why we ask the patients to enter alone or if underage with only one parent at the first visit. To avoid contamination of bacteria or viruses we only use one-use materials and instruments, which are thrown away after every use.
For any other equipment this strict sanification process is followed:
- Every metallic or autoclavable instrument is immerged in an ultra sound tank filled with disinfectant solution in order to separate every organic particle from them.
- After this cycle they are washed manually in a disinfectant solution, dried accurately, packed with a sealing machine and sterilized in a type B autoclave for 20 minutes at 135 °C . In this way surgical instruments maintain sterility until used.
- Also every surface is washed, dried and disinfected accurately after every surgery (using hypochlorite , chlorhexidine , phenol e glutaraldehyde at 2% ) so that every bacteria, spore or toxin is killed. Further more the operative personnel are provided with individual protection and mono-use gloves.
- The sterilization cycle is verified through biological tests daily, weekly and monthly.
When planning our operating block we put particular attention on planning clean and dirty routes.
These routes must be separated to avoid any contamination. For this reason waste cannot pass through the operating block’s filter but have to pass through the sterilization room, both to abbreviate the dirty course and to use the available space in the best way. Sterilizing operations, washing, packing and sterilizing are never done at the same time, in order to avoid any possible overlapping of processes.
In our structure the sterilization room communicates directly with the operative room through a window and a hopper for the evacuation of the textiles: the hopper allows dirty textiles, packed in special bags present in the room to go to sterilization through a system of inter-blocked doors that won’t let them open simultaneously. The bags will then be put in a closet that is in fact the “dirty materials” store.
Instruments go through sterilization through a special window: they are immediately treated in the sink located under the window, then washed in the washer and finally packed and sterilized.
After sterilization surgical sets, safety packed, re-enter the room through the window and are put in proper closets. Particular attention was put on the measures needed to avoid accidents caused by electro-medical instruments: all of our instruments are approved by CE and respect Law n. 626 and directive n . 93/42. A patients’ and workers’ Safety manager verifies periodically the respect of the National health System’s rules.
Our electric installation and grounding comply with the most recent regulations and are checked every 2 years.
Our x-ray machines comply with CE normative and are annually checked and serviced by a qualified technician.
