When you see a healthcare professional, whether, for a check-up or more intensive procedure, you don’t expect to come out with a new sickness or infection. Your dentist takes your care seriously and strives to keep his facility, employees and himself clean from any transmittable diseases.
Protection From Infection is the Law
Any profession that deals with bodily fluids such as blood or saliva have risks of passing disease from person to person, from airborne particles, or from contact with inanimate objects like dental instruments and furniture that have not been properly sanitized after use.
Today, steps to reduce infection risk are a routine part of dental practice and required by law. Your dentist and his staff wear masks to ensure that microbes from the air are not a health risk from coughing or sneezing. Rubber gloves are changed with each new patient in order to eliminate health risks. Hands must be washed in between patients. Dental tools are changed or sanitized with every use for the same reasons. The dental office is kept clean and tidy. All of these precautions are done to reduce the chances of spreading disease, the most contagious of which include viruses HIV, herpes, syphilis, hepatitis, and flu.
Since 1986, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the American Dental Association (ADA) have set up rules for dental offices in order to control potential infections. These must be followed. So, you are safe!
If you’re worried about disease from a dental visit, call Dr. Pete Olberding for more information. Please contact E. P. True Dental - West Des Moines, IA to make an appointment at: (515) 224-9899, or come by our office in West Des Moines, Iowa.