With our modern understanding of bacteria, infections and transmission of diseases, cleanliness is an absolute priority in the dental office. In any practice, one of the biggest concerns is patient health and safety. With this in mind, we would like to take a moment to show you what goes into keeping our office clean!
For starters, every instrument that we use in your mouth is either single-use or sterilized. In our office (and most offices nation wide) we use a device called an autoclave to ensure the sterility of our instruments. After thoroughly washing our tools to remove off loose debris, they are dried and placed inside one of our two autoclaves. These ovens use steam, heat and high pressure to kill bacteria, eliminate spores and destroy infectious agents like viruses or foreign proteins. We regularly test our autoclaves for their effectiveness using bacteria cultures to ensure nothing survives the cleaning cycle. The end result of these practices is a safe dental experience that eliminates the possibility of patient-to-patient infection.
Beyond instruments, every surface the patient or our staff encounters in a treatment room is either covered with a disposable barrier or cleaned with a disinfectant. Dentistry produces a number of potentially infectious aerosols, making thorough cleaning between patients an absolute necessity. Additionally, we use clean deionized water in our chairs that is further filtered before delivery. Beyond any special techniques, keeping an organized and clutter free office allows us to ensure every surface is clean to the highest standards. We hope it shows!
At Thousand Oaks Family Dentistry, our goal is to provide high quality dentistry in a relaxing and safe environment. If you would like to know more about our cleaning protocols or any other procedure, please give our office a call. We want our patients to be confident that they are receiving the absolute best care possible!