When it comes to your dental care you know just how important it is to do your part to keep your mouth healthy. Dr. Dokhanchi and his team at Fox Valley Dental Care in Aurora, IL know how important it is that they do their part to ensure only the highest standards in sterilization are adhered to.

Heat sterilization is one of the methods used to keep dental tools and equipment sterilized, and safe for use on you and your family.

Dry Heat Sterilization

There are a number of patient-care items that may actually become damaged from the use of moist heat. This is where dry heat sterilization steps in, to ensure that all tools remain in pristine condition.

Dry heat sterilization, as the noncorrosive choice, can be a lengthier process than other heat sterilization procedures. There are two kinds of dry-heating sterilization used for dental tools and equipment: forced air and static air.

Static air heat sterilization machines most often resemble an oven. They have heating coils that work much the same way that a convection oven would, by causing the rise of hot air throughout the chamber.

Also called a rapid heat transfer sterilizer, forced air sterilization makes use of a chamber in which heated air circulates at a high rate of speed. This process can reduce the sterilization time, compared to static air sterilization.

Steam Sterilization

The process of sterilization using steam is one of the most widely used methods in the medical and dental industry. It’s the preferred choice quite often for dental tools and equipment that are not sensitive to moisture and heat.

In order to effectively kill off any microorganism, and ensure complete sterilization, each item needs to be directly exposed to the steam at a specified temperature for a defined amount of time. There are two kinds of steam sterilization used for dental tools and equipment; high-speed pre-vacuum, and gravity displacement.

Most dental offices will have a gravity displacement sterilizer, which is a tabletop sterilizing system. Generated steam fills the chamber, and the unsaturated air is then forced out of it through a vent on the wall of the chamber.

High-speed pre-vacuum sterilizers use a pump that works to create a vacuum inside of the sterilization chamber. This removes all of the air prior to the chamber being pressurized with steam. This is the faster sterilization choice when compared to the gravity displacement sterilization method.

Bob Dokhanchi, DDS and his team make your health their priority. Using state of the art sterilization methods will ensure that all tools and equipment used as a part of your dental care are completely sterile, and safe.