Having previously looked at the automotive and jewellery sectors, we turn our focus towards health and safety in dentistry – and how VODEX products can help you manage the dangers for the good of all concerned.
What are the hazards in a dental surgery?
Occupational hazards to dental staff (as well as patients) can include:
- Radiation
- Sharp objects
- Harmful substances
- Skeletal and muscle problems
- And dental aerosols.
For more on those in detail, see our blog post ‘Occupational Hazards in Dentistry.’
Of those dangers to dental patient safety and dental staff health, it’s the last one we at VODEX are particularly concerned with protecting people against.
To illustrate why, we talked to one of our clients, Dental consultant Paul Liano of Tangmere Dental Care in Chichester, West Sussex.
Tangmere Dental Care case study
Established in 1988, Tangmere Dental Care has been providing high-quality dental care of all kinds to people in the West Sussex area for over 30 years. Across three clinics, they cover everything from preventative dental work right the way up to complex restorative dental work like implants and full mouth restorations.
It was during the pandemic we first heard from Tangmere’s founder Dr Liano, who was taking an unusually hands-on approach to surgery safety in response to the restrictions brought about by Covid-19.
The problem
“Dental work is one of the most high-risk jobs there is. We do surgery with lots of sharp objects where we’re in very close to a person’s face, meaning we need to wear suitable PPE. Our surgical masks are not very protective against airborne infection, and when Covid came along we realised how little protection dentists and our staff actually had!
“If a patient has an infection in their respiratory tract or bloodborne infections, we’ve always been highly at risk as a profession. We have to worry about cross contamination between patients, but also contamination to ourselves.
“The thing that made me raise an eyebrow was how little research had been done on aerosol transmission in dental settings. We just accepted that we’d often get coughs, colds and flus as a hazard of the job, and my own immune system became more robust from it. But that was just ignorance really.
“Of course, when the pandemic started, we were told we needed six air changes an hour [later upgraded to ten – ed.] to keep our customers and dental staff safe, using a high-power air circulation system. Initially, the guidance was “if you can prove your air clearing is at six changes per hour, you don’t have to do an hour’s worth of fallow time.” However, during the pandemic I used smoke bombs to do a test on the air circulation system and found out it was next to useless for clearing the air in the room – after an hour it had only cleared small pockets of smoke in the corner near to where the unit actually was.
“After that, I decided to try local exhaust ventilation and purchased a unit from China. It was around then that I contacted VODEX and spoke to Paul Riddick, trying to get some smoke pens for further tests. He told me VODEX was developing the DentalAIR UVC® and I was shortly thereafter able to compare both units.”
The VODEX Solution
“I’m very passionate about what I do, and so are VODEX. They care deeply about making something that actually works for the industry that requires it – in this case, creating something to address the real dangers in dentistry. Paul [Riddick] listened deeply to all of the challenges we face in dentistry and with the DentalAIR UVC®, he and VODEX created something really ergonomic and fits beside almost any dental chair.
“The arm and aeroshield are also easily moveable, which is hugely helpful. Sometimes we have patients who want to just jump up, and with the DentalAIR UVC® we can just push the arm aside – so it works for patients and clinicians. The other units I looked at from other companies didn’t consider that and were in many ways completely unusable for everyday dental work. the DentalAIR UVC® does exactly what it’s designed to do and if anything, it makes my job even easier, as well as safer.
“I also learned an awful lot from Paul at VODEX in terms of particle contamination and why air exchange systems don’t work. If you take a kitchen for instance, the extractor fan is over the cooker hob – not over the other side of the room. You want to get rid of the smoke at the point it’s produced. When you think of it like that, the idea that something sucking air in one corner is going to clear away a contaminate produced in another part of the room – in my mind, the idea borders on farcical. The tests I’ve done showed it, and I know that recent tests by Newcastle University have proven it.”
The result
“I am so happy with the DentalAIR UVC®,” says Paul. “To be perfectly honest, I don’t know why the health authorities haven’t been more responsive to LEV to control the spread of infection. The DentalAIR UVC® literally keeps the infections from getting into the air in the first place! If there’s a spray coming up from a patient’s mouth, you want to control it at the point of production – even more so now after the pandemic! And that’s what the VODEX system does. It’s simple common sense, and it works wonderfully in practice.
“In terms of maintenance, I’ve only had to change my filters annually – which makes the DentalAIR UVC® really quite economical for long-term running. It’s also been 100% reliable. I’m not the only clinician here; we have two dental associates and three hygienists, and all of them have actually said they would rather not work without it. In fact, one of my hygienists left another practice because they wouldn’t install a DentalAIR UVC®; she said working with one makes her feel safe and she doesn’t want to work without it. So, in terms of health and safety in dentistry, the unit makes people who’ve used it feel safe.
“The truth is, I don’t know why a dental practice wouldn’t get a DentalAIR UVC®. For addressing occupational hazards to dental staff and patients, it’s fantastic. If there turns out to be another virus, for instance, there is a significant cross infection risk with one person coming in immediately after another. But the DentalAIR UVC® takes away the vast majority of contaminates before you can breathe them in, and makes your surgery a much safer environment. It’s just mind-blowing to me that more dental practices aren’t using one.
“I really believe that the DentalAIR UVC® is what the whole industry of dentistry needs, and that’s going to be universal – worldwide.”
Do you need effective ventilation for your dental practice?
The VODEX DentalAIR UVC® is designed to give you exactly that. It makes your dental surgery safer by removing potentially hazardous dental aerosols at the point they’re created, before they can enter the breathing zone – keeping your dental staff and patients alike protected from viruses and many other kinds of harmful particulates.
To learn more about the effectiveness of the DentalAIR UVC®, see the blogs below or get in touch with us to find out just how it can help improve health and safety in dentistry.
Of all the occupational hazards plaguing jewellery workers, fumes and dust can be the one that’s easy to overlook – and sometimes the trickiest to get right.
Our team are experts in building custom solutions for any kind of business, including ones in the jewellery sector. If you have questions about building your own solution, get in touch – we’ll be happy to help.
