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Ultrasonic Cleaner Tips For Effective Instrument Sterilization

Ultrasonic Cleaner Tips For Effective Instrument Sterilization
by Kara Vavrosky, RDH

Following these tips can help to ensure the safety of your patients.

After seating your 10 a.m. patient, reviewing his or her health history, taking vitals, taking any needed radiographs and perio charting, you open your wrapped or bagged instruments to begin scaling. Then you see it. Baked on, hardened crud on your supposedly sterile instruments.

Your eyes become wide. Did the patient see this? What if they did, and now they won’t trust that any instruments are sterile! You excuse yourself to grab another cassette of instruments. You’ve just wasted precious minutes of treatment time, not to mention you are grossed out and hoping your patient isn’t too. You know exactly what happened. Your instruments weren’t properly cleaned, then inspected, before they went into the sterilizer. But you know you put them in the ultrasonic cleaner, so what went wrong? Here are a few ultrasonic cleaner tips to help avoid this situation.

Don’t overload the ultrasonic cleaner

For contaminated instruments to be properly sterilized, they must be cleaned of debris, which includes the removal of organic and inorganic material. Ultrasonic cleaning removes soil by cavitation and implosion in which waves of acoustic energy are propagated in aqueous solutions to disrupt the bonds that hold particulate matter to surfaces. For this to work, instruments must be completely submerged and in contact with the solution to remove bioburden and debris. If you overload the ultrasonic cleaner and instruments are piled deeper than the fluid level, the initial cleaning of debris simply cannot happen. If instruments are above the fluid level, bioburden and debris are allowed to dry and harden as if you didn’t put them into the ultrasonic cleaner at all.

Read and follow the manufacturer’s instruction of the solution your office uses

How often should the solution be changed? How long should instruments be in the ultrasonic cleaner? What’s the correct dilution ratio?

All of these questions can be answered by reading the manufacturer’s instructions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states, “Enzyme solutions should be used in accordance with manufacturer’s instructions, which include proper dilution of the enzymatic detergent and contact with equipment for the amount of time specified on the label.” If the instructions aren’t clear, don’t hesitate to contact the manufacturer directly. Most companies have customer service phone numbers and emails that can be readily found on their website.

Read full article on Modern Dental Network.