Consequent hygiene regime: More effective for the own practice - more safety on a global scale

The disinfection and cleaning of hands, surfaces, instruments and special areas is a necessary prerequisite for the orderly operation of the practice. It protects the employees and patients against illnesses, including also extremely contagious and life-endangering diseases. In this way, when carried out professionally practice hygiene can even save lives! There are many regulations that serve to guarantee the safety of the practice staff and patients: The recommendations of the Robert-Koch Institute (RKI), the medical products law (MPG), the medical products operator ordinance (MPBetreibV), works safety regulations, the infection protection law (IfSG) - the hygiene team has to make sure all of the threads come together. Often one has the feeling: Here or there we could do things even better! Where exactly and how? A tour around the International Dental Show, 12 to 16 March 2019, in Cologne will answer this question.

Here the team can fall back on the sample hygiene plan, compiled by the German Dental Association (BZÄK) and the German Task Force for Hygiene in Dental Surgeries (DAHZ), which contains manifold offers of the Chambers and statutory dental associations as well as of external suppliers. Particularly the companies of the dental industry specialised in this field support a consistent hygiene management.

Even experienced users are amazed at the progress which is possible in such a mature field. The composition of the active substances is even constantly reconsidered. For example, the aim for hand hygiene agents is to achieve an improved caring effect (i.e. through special formulations based on propanol and ethanol in new mixing ration as well as dexpanthenol as a skin-regenerating component). The preparation of the sterile materials is a further innovative area. Modern thermal disinfectors are setting new records in load capacity or facilitate the documentation and organisation for the practice team with convenient interfaces to the electronic practice administration.

The network integration of many function units (i.e. autoclaves, thermal disinfectors, ultrasound devices) will no doubt further increase the efficiency of the hygiene management in future. For example, the automated inscription of packets of sterile materials brings added safety as well as saving time. The German dental industry supports the hygiene team with specialised consulting services, which initially fill abstract requirements of document templates for quality management with life and exploit the opportunities of current innovations for hygiene materials, hardware and software.

"The dentists and their teams can extensively inform themselves about the current optimisation potential in the hygiene and infection control section and about quality management at IDS from 12 to 16 March 2019 in Cologne and seek advice from competent manufacturers and specialised dealers," said Mark Stephen Pace, Chairman of the VDDI (Association of the German Dental Manufacturers e.V.). "We are all aware of the risk associated with pathogenic micro-organisms. This applies to every single practice and beyond this the hygiene regime of many teams ultimately also has a global effect. The right answer to this challenge is to visit the largest international trade fair for dentistry."

IDS (International Dental Show) takes place in Cologne every two years and is organised by the GFDI Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Dental-Industrie mbH, the commercial enterprise of the Association of German Dental Manufacturers (VDDI) and is staged by Koelnmesse GmbH, Cologne.