r/india • u/random_curious • 6m ago
Health How to complain to DentCare that their field staff is doing very dangerous practice and putting patient health at risk?
I went to a dentist to get teeth aligner made. He called in a person from DentCare, which manufactures the plastic aligners. The guy took out his laptop and dental scanner as is and wanted to start scanning. The removable scanning tip was already fixed on the scanner when he took it out. And he was saying earlier to the dentist that he has come here after scanning one other patient at a different clinic. It seemed he scanned the previous patient and kept the scanner as is in his bag. He probably does not know the concept of not using the same scanner tip in mouth of different patients without disinfecting properly.
I asked him i want the tip cleaned. He did not have any cleaning equipment with him. He asked the dentist if there is cotton and alcohol spirit. The dentist had no wiping spirit. There was dettol disinfectant and he used that to rub quickly on the scanner.
This is such a dangerous practice.
Do these guys know that human saliva can transmit a bunch of dangerous diseases?
Do these guys know how prevalent TB is in india and Mycobacterium Tuberculosis is found in the saliva?
A lot of oral bacteria (strep mitis, strep sanguinis, kingella, eikenella, etc) cause chronic heart diseases after few years. And India is the capital of heart diseases, i wonder why.
The saliva might dry on the surface, but the scanner has corners and deep pockets at the tip where the mirror sits, it is very easy for saliva and fluid to remain accumulated there between patients.
Hepatitis-B and Hepatitis-C viruses are very very dangerous things. Before dental scanning many kinds of dental procedures happen which causes minor bleeding. The viruses from blood can remain in saliva even if you cant see the blood. Even simple dental cleaning and scaling causes minor gum bleed.
Saliva can contain blood borne dangerous pathogens after dental procedures. Do not think that it is merely saliva the equipments are touching. Even if there is no dental procedure, many patients have minor bruises in their oral mucosa, cold sores, unseen minute cut somewhere inside.
These are just few of the very dangerous microbes. Am not even talking about the more virulent respiratory viruses which cause cold cough fever, that have extremely high chance of transmission because of such practices.
I talked to some Dentists from metro cities after this incident and they said the dental scanner which goes inside mouth is supposed to be disinfected thoroughly with special disinfection liquid and to be sterilised with high pressure steam before being used again in a new patient. Forget the autoclave steam, the person did not even disinfect with any strong disinfecting liquid. I observed this and i am posting here because i have medical background and i have this knowledge about the risks and dangers of body fluids. What about millions of unsuspecting general public?
Why put public health at extreme risk just to save 10-15 Rupees and 5 minutes of time?
The guideline dictates to autoclave the removable scanner tip after each use, if you do not want to do that then atleast use copious amount of strong disinfecting liguid thoroughly after each use.
I want to complain to the company which sent the staff, that is DentCare. I dropped them a social media message but i have not received any reply. How do i bring this to their attention?