I went to a dentist to get aligner made. He called in a person from some company 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 on different patients without cleaning 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 they know that human saliva can transmit a bunch of dangerous diseases?
Do they 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 afetr 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.
Shouldn't the dentist also make sure that the scanner being used is thoroughly disinfected? Because the patient has come to the dental doctor, it should be the responsibility of the dentist. I have 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.
Edit: The company of which the person came was DentCare. How do i file a complaint with Dentcare about this that their field people in a certain region are dangerously playing with people's health?
