Our #1 goal at Yunbelievable Smiles is keeping our patients and our team members safe! We are using the latest and greatest technologies when it comes to infection control and making sure that our patients have a healthy, safe visit in a medically clean environment.
Yunbelievable Smiles uses both Distilled and Deionized water which is provided by SciCan’s VistaPure System. All water that is used on equipment and all water that will enter the patient’s mouth is ran thru our 5 step purification system.
VisaPure- provides two grades of high purity water to anywhere in the sterilization center. Our Hydrim Instrument Washer and our Statim Autoclave both use this water when processing our instruments.
VistaPure also provides high purity water for the bottles used in the treatment rooms. This is a preferred method over treatment rooms supplied with city lines. City water can be full of contaminants. Water that sits in lines can also start to grow bacteria. Our bottle system also uses Sterilsil’s Steri Straw V2 which shocks the water, eliminating any possible bacteria before it enters our lines and eventually enters our dental instruments and the patient’s mouth.
Yunbelievable Smiles uses SciCan’s Hydrim G4 Automated Instrument Washer. In the beginning of the instrument sterilization process, the instruments need to have any excess filling material, tooth material, cements, etc. that might be caked onto the instrument, completely removed. We do this first by manually cleaning the instruments after use with a >90% alcohol wipe. These instruments are then packaged safely into a metal cassette. The instrument cassette holds the instruments throughout the sterilization process, this helps keep our staff safe from any instrument related injuries during processing.
The Hydrim uses detergent and high temperature water to help clean the instruments of any debris that may still be stuck on the instrument. A cycle runs for about 45 minutes. The Hydrim works similarly to how a dishwasher works when it removes food debris from dishes and kitchen utensils. To finish off the cycle everything is dried in the Hydrim after the wash cycle and ready for packaging.
There are many different ways to package our cassettes and instruments. Yunbelievable Smiles uses self-sealing nylon wraps. Offices can also use paper wraps, however, we prefer the nylon wraps because of its ability to keep everything sealed and sterile for a longer period of time.
After the cassettes and instruments are packaged, they are sent to one of two places. Our main workhorse is our CPAC Rh-Pro11. It is a High Velocity Hot Air (HVHA) Dry Heat Sterilizer, which was a technology developed by NASA when they had the need to sterilize items for space missions. Our smaller sterilizing unit is used for items that can not reach a super high heat. The smaller unit is the Statim 5000 G4 Autoclave, this unit relies on steam sterilization. Both of these units are tested weekly with a biological spore test and sent out to a third party to be tested to confirm they are operating properly. Chemical indicators are also used on every cycle to be sure the instruments have been thru a complete cycle. Both of our sterilization units are connected to the office Wifi and monitored by an internal computer, and reports of each cycle can be printed.
All clinical staff team members wear ASTM Level 3 masks, protective eyewear, and nitrile gloves. N95 masks, and surgical gowns will be required when we are working with a patient that may have a known infectious disease. Hand hygiene will be very important! The team is instructed to wash their hands every time after leaving and before entering a treatment room. Scrubs should be left at the office and washed on site. Door handles and high traffic areas (waiting area, patient restroom, reception desk, etc.) should be sprayed with disinfectant spray and wiped after the morning appointments and at the end of the day.
Disposable products are used where we can use them (i.e. our single use burs). Protective barriers are used in the treatment rooms where applicable. All surfaces are also wiped down with hospital grade disinfecting spray. The disinfecting solution we use are bactericidal, viricidal, and fungicidal. It requires a 30 second contact time so it is sprayed onto the surfaces and left to sit for about a minute before it is wiped up.
“The #1 Unhealthiest Job of all 974 occupations in this study. The dental professional is especially vulnerable to exposures of contaminants, disease and infections, and time spent sitting. Most noticeably, fine and ultra-fine particulate matter, which includes harmful bio-aerosol particles, are capable of reaching the deepest part of our lungs, being absorbed into the blood stream and having systemic effects to our health. Studies such as these have elevated indoor air quality and pollution control as a focus of a number of government agencies and organizations to determine correlations to human health.” – Oral Health Group
Although we can’t eliminate this risk, we do everything we can to minimize it.
At Yunbelievable Smiles, before every procedure, every patient will be instructed to rinse with an antiseptic mouth rinse. This will help reduce the bacterial load in the oral environment before the procedure. When needed, an isolation High Volume Evacuation (HVE) system will be used to help minimize aerosols.
“The use of a high-volume evacuator, or HVE, has been shown to reduce the contamination arising from the operative site by more than 90 percent.” – JADA: Aerosols and splatter in dentistry: A brief review of the literature and infection control implications. STEPHEN K. HARREL, D.D.S.; JOHN MOLINARI, Ph.D.
To improve the air quality in the office, and to make sure there are no bioaerosols floating around anywhere in the office, we have H13 HEPA air purifier is in each treatment room, in the reception area, and in other areas of the office to strategically clean the air completely and efficiently. These filters provide medical grade purified air by removing 99.9% of particles as small as 0.1 microns. This includes all bacteria, fungi and viruses. As well as the COVID-19 virus which can be as small as 0.1 micron.
Together with a pre antiseptic rinse, HVE isolation system, and HEPA purification we keeping our staff and our patients in a healthy, safe environment.
During the COVID-19 Pandemic and after patients will be screened on the phone before their visit, indefinitely. Temperatures will also be taken when staff and patients arrive to the office.
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