Cleaning of dental handpieces

Background

This work aimed to provide evidence for the importance of regular cleaning and care of dental handpieces. In addition, this study aimed to show that automated cleaning of dental tools may deliver superior results compared with manual cleaning.

Methods

Publicly available data from the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) Manufacturer and User Facility Device Experience (MAUDE) database on incidents in the use of dental handpieces from the past 10 years were evaluated. The cleaning results of more than 4,830 instruments were also investigated and evaluated.

Results

By evaluating the manufacturer’s information on the incidents reported in the FDA’s MAUDE database, the connection between inadequate or no maintenance and care and the incidents was clearly shown. The evaluation of the results of manual cleaning compared with automated cleaning clearly shows that better results can be achieved through automated cleaning.

Conclusions

The evaluation of the FDA’s MAUDE database confirmed and emphasized the importance of cleaning and care for the safe and long-term use of dental tools. Comparing the data from manual cleaning and the usage of a device for automated cleaning of dental handpieces, it was shown that the establishment of a quality-controlled system for in-use testing of cleaning performance could provide valuable data for assessing the efficacy of different cleaning processes. Valuable feedback for the user can be derived this way. In addition, it was shown that automated cleaning of dental handpieces is a reasonable alternative and leads to clearly better results.