Desinfección De Impresiones

Disinfection of dental
impressions – compliance
to accepted standards
N. Almortadi1 and R. G. Chadwick2
Verifiable CPD paper
have been cleaned and disinfected before
dispatch to the laboratory lies solely with
the dentist. It is good practice to agree the
cleaning and disinfection process with the
laboratory and label the device to indicate
disinfected status’. In addition, they pointout that uncertainty of disinfection risks
repeated disinfection of an impression in
the dental laboratory. This may have detrimental
consequences for its dimensions.
Previous investigations of impression
disinfection, against this ideal,3,4 within
the setting of general dental practice,
have demonstrated that cross infection
control was not routine, with almost 25%
of impressionsreceived by the laboratory
being visibly contaminated with blood3
and inappropriately disinfected in 43%
of cases.4 In light of these findings it is
perhaps not surprising that Kugel et al.5
found a lack of confidence among dental
technicians that impressions were disinfected
resulting in repeat disinfection of
Introduction
The British Dental Association has for
some years recommended thedecontamination
and disinfection of dental
impressions1 before sending them to the
dental laboratory. Current guidance on
the decontamination and disinfection of
dental impressions is clearly set out in
the Advice Sheet A12 produced by that
organisation.2 This clearly states that ‘the
responsibility for ensuring impressions
Introduction The responsibility of ensuring impressions have beencleaned and disinfected before dispatch to the dental
laboratory lies solely with the dentist. Uncertainty of impression disinfection risks both the health of the receiving dental
technician and potential repeat disinfection of an already disinfected impression with detrimental consequences for its dimensions.
Objective To ascertain, from the perspectives of dentists and dental technicians, currentimpression decontamination
and disinfection practices with, in the case of the technicians, an estimate of the relative prevalence of contaminated
voids within apparently disinfected impressions. Design Anonymous postal questionnaire. Method Dentist (n = 200)
and dental technician (n = 200) potential participants, selected at random from the registers held by the General Dental
Council, wereinvited to complete an anonymous postal questionnaire that sought to establish current practices and perceived
effectiveness of impression disinfection. Results Questionnaire return rates of 42.1% and 31.2% were recorded for
dentists and dental technicians respectively. A wide range of solutions, at different dilutions of the same product, was used
by the dentists to disinfect dentalimpressions. 37.2% rinsed the impressions with water, and 2.6% always brushed debris
away, before disinfection. 24.7% of dentists did not inform the laboratory of disinfection. Irrespective of the disinfection
status of the received impressions, 50% of the responding dental technicians disinfected all impressions. 95% of them had
received blood-contaminated impressions. 15% had encountered blood-filledvoids upon trimming back the peripheries of
impressions. 64.7% were confident that the impressions received by them had been disinfected by the dentists. Conclusions
Compliance with good practice is less than ideal and education in impression disinfection for both dentists and dental
technicians is required to address this.
some impressions. Such doubt has also
been noted by others6 and thepractice of
repeat disinfection risks the surface detail
and accuracy of the impression.2 It is also
apparent that in some cases the dentists
prescribing the restorations have little
knowledge of the practices used by the
dental laboratory for, in the study of Pang
and Millar,7 when asked ‘Does your laboratory
technician disinfect working impressions
before pouring?’ most respondents...