Oral health is becoming one of our primary concerns and in order to take proper care of our teeth, most of us visit dentists regularly.
Most young people and their parents have also started becoming increasingly aware of the structure of their teeth and put on braces to get the perfect set of teeth.
It’s highly ironic, however, that the place we go to for upgrading our oral health, itself, many a time, ignores oral health completely.
Here’s how:
I have been regularly visiting three orthodontists for about 2 and a half years now for my orthodontic treatment (braces) and also for regular check-ups.
One thing which is common among all the three of them is not their efficiency or their tools, it’s the folly of using the same Surgical Equipment on every patient that comes one after the other, without even sterilizing the surgical equipment!
It’s not just me- few of my friends have also witnessed the exact same thing! Don’t believe me? Next time you go to a dentist, pay attention!
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A THRIVING BUSINESS FOR DENTISTS
By going to the dentist, I might get cured of the cavity for which I went to the dentist, but I might also come home with some sort of viral infection in my tooth that was affecting the previous patient.
Time + Money= Wasted
In fact, this can become quite a thriving business for the dentists where the patient gets infected by the dirty tools being used in their mouth, and comes back to the dentist for a check-up again, and again!
CONFRONT YOUR DENTIST ABOUT IT
Though cleaning and sterilizing surgical equipment is a fundamental part of proper infection control procedures, all the dentists do not follow it.
Even though few of them do, they don’t do it to the required degree.
What I mean to say is, some dentists do the cleaning thrice a day, some twice a day and some also once a day, thus rendering the infection control measure utterly invalid!
So, what’s important is to not only go to dentists regularly, but also to make sure that your dentist is following the protocol, and if the dentist is not doing that, then to tell him/her to do so right away.
That’s what I did when I got to know about what was happening. The dentist initially denied it saying that it was so quick that it happened after the previous patient left but before I entered.
In micro-seconds? I was sure, then, of how well the dentist cleaned the tools if at all he/she did so.
After re-asserting that I couldn’t let the surgical equipment in my mouth unless I saw for myself that they were thoroughly cleaned, the dentist used some sterilizer to clean it. I do not till now know if that’s the proper method to clean it.
In fact, in the UK, one in every nine dentists were found to be breaching the guidelines of cleanliness and infection control. Let’s act before this becomes the situation in India as well.
So, stay alert and keep healthy!
Sources: The Telegraph, CNN, NCBI
Image Sources: Google
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