Decontamination

Decontamination is the term used for taking soiled instruments and processing them to provide sterile instruments ready for the next procedure. In veterinary practice this process goes largely unregulated or controlled. At VetDentist we have adopted the standards used by human dentists to ensure the safe supply of instruments for use in our patients. This extends to the level of ensuring that ventilation airflows pass from the clean instrument areas to the contaminated ones – rather than risking any infection spread by a reverse flow. Adopting the standards required of dentists has many benefits for our team as well. Nurses no longer need to spend hours scrubbing instruments with brushes, or risk injuries from cleaning sharp scissors. The use of the most modern, highest quality equipment not only saves nurses time – but improves the quality of their working environment – whilst also doing the job better! The decontamination process consist of an initial cleaning, use of the handpiece cleaner and lubrication system (Assistina), then a high temperature washer-disinfector to thoroughly clean instruments, the sterilisation using the Lara & Lisa Autoclaves. All of our W&H equipment provide traceability during the cycles – with any faults being notified and all of the cleaning and sterilisation cycles logged on our system.