At Sherwood Dental Care, sterilization is a top priority. We take cleanliness seriously and want to make sure you leave healthier than when you came. We make sure our office meets or exceeds Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines.

Before the construction of our office began, we carefully planned around a state-of-the-art sterilization center to ensure that exceptional cleanliness and sterilization is an everyday reality. Everything that goes into your mouth goes through one of two basic processes with no exceptions. Disposable instruments (suction straws, tray covers, etc.) are thrown away. Everything else goes through an elaborate process to ensure sterilization:

• The instruments are first scrubbed with soap and water, then they are put into a device called an ultrasonic bath which contains disinfectant.
• The ultrasonic bath creates extremely aggressive agitation.
• After the ultrasonic bath, instruments are rinsed with water again, then dried, bagged and run through a heat and pressure autoclave, which completely sterilizes the instruments.
• The bags have indicators to verify sterilization has occurred.
• Dental hand pieces are scrubbed with soap and water, then run through a device which first flushes them with alcohol then lubricates them.
• Next we wipe them with alcohol, bag them and run them through a heat and pressure autoclave.

To ensure an abundant supply of sterile instruments, we have two autoclaves: one which is slower but is able to do a larger load of instruments and one that can do a small amount of instruments more rapidly. Most dental instruments can withstand the heat of the autoclave. Those items that cannot withstand the heat are scrubbed with soap and water, then placed in an ADA-approved chemical sterilizer for at least 10 hours, then rinsed with water and dried.

In dental treatment rooms, the plastics (chair covers, light switch covers, etc.) are thrown away. The tabletop, x-ray head, delivery unit, and any surfaces that were touched are sprayed or wiped with ADA-approved disinfectants.

The water to our dental chairs is purified by distillation. The chairs run off these bottles of distilled water. To ensure the dental chair water is pure, the water lines in the chair are disinfected with an ADA-approved disinfectant once a week, then flushed with hot water. The water lines are purged dry every night.

We use gloves, gowns, masks, eye protection, and barrier covers for each procedure.

We invite anyone who is interested in taking a tour of our sterilization center to let us know the next time you are in.