Dentists are trained to keep their equipment clean and sterile. This is because bacteria can hide in any nook or cranny of a dental office, including the tools you use on yourself. If the cleaning process isn’t done properly, those germs will spread from one patient to another when they come in for treatment. Therefore, dentists must take extra care to make sure everything used on patients is clean and sanitary before it touches their mouths.
You're probably a regular at the dentist's office. You've been going there for years, and you know that most patients see their dentist twice a year (once in the fall and once in the spring).
But if you have an oral health problem that requires professional attention, you might be getting more than two checkups per year. Maybe it's something minor like needing a filling replaced or teeth whitened; maybe it's more serious like gum disease or cavities. Whatever it is, chances are good that your dentist has made sure to keep up with his or her work schedule so as not to miss any appointments from one year to the next!
This means that he or she will probably have seen each patient at least twice during this time period—and possibly more often if necessary—but not necessarily all of them within those 12 months (or even six months). So while there may be some overlap between patients' treatment plans from one visit back in April versus those from September forward until December 1st...
You may have heard that most dentists still use disposable tools and equipment when treating their patients. The truth is, this is true for some dentists. However, it's not the norm in most practices.
In fact, some dental practices will provide you with single-use disposable items if you ask for them—but only after consulting with the dentist or hygienist about your specific needs. Examples of single-use disposable items include:
Sterile instruments (an example is a tongue depressor) are used to collect samples so that they can be sent to a lab for analysis, or to begin the treatment process.
Sterile instruments are important for many reasons:
Some dentists still use disposable tools, but some will provide you with single-use disposable items if you ask.
These days, it’s not uncommon to find that your dentist will provide you with a set of single-use tools for each patient visit. This is especially true if he or she is new at their practice and wants to keep costs low by using fewer supplies each time someone comes in for a cleaning or checkup appointment.
However, some dentists are not so accommodating when it comes to providing these supplies—especially if they feel that patients are asking too much of them (or perhaps even making them uncomfortable). For example: If I were going into my orthodontist's office tomorrow morning after having left my toothbrush sitting out overnight on the countertop overnight instead of putting it away in its designated spot where no one would see it until next morning when everyone else got ready for work early enough to get there before 9AM then yes indeedy yesssssssssuuurrrrreallyyyyyy doopiiiihhhhhhhhhhh woooowwwwwwwwww!
"We polish our teeth with diamond stones and we don't even label them." So one day I asked him why he didn't make a single-use toothbrush. "I did make single-use toothbrushes once," he explained, "but they weren't really that effective. When you have a dental problem like decay, you need to go in there with a brush and clean it out. Then you take a different kind of brush and create the same forces on the tooth: the pressure comes from your fingers; the abrasive come from the teeth."
In this study, about half of subjects were given single-use brushes and instructed to use them for 10 min every day after brushing their teeth. The other half were given regular brushes without any instructions on how or when to use them. After two weeks, there was no difference in bacterial counts between either group or among any of the subjects in each group. At six months follow up, no relationship was observed between frequency of use of single-use versus regular brushes and plaque removal rate in either population... The authors found that wearing dental instruments during treatment did not increase microbial contamination or transmission rates compared with patients who did not wear anything at all... During some dental procedures, instruments are put inside patients' mouths for a short time (e.g., examination) before being discarded... Some studies have suggested that mouth rinsing might reduce bacterial contamination but others have failed to find such an effect... In conclusion, we expect that manufacturers will continue to offer new products targeted at reducing patient exposure to potentially harmful microbes by offering more hygienic products.... We encourage dentists to provide their patients with fully disposable tools so as to reduce their risk for picking up harmful microbes from other people's tools!" - Tuohy et al., 2008 "Dental Instruments and Patient Exposure To Potential Pathogens" The Journal