Surveillance and Technology

Concurrent Education Session - 60 minutes

1304 - Dental Infection Control: Oral Environment Characteristics That Drive a Modified Approach

Primary Speaker(s)

• 

  Gary Carter, MPH, CIC, CIH, REHS

  Principal Institutional Environmental Health Consultant
  Indian Health Service
  Albuquerque, New Mexico

  Nothing to disclose
• JU

  Joshua Ulibarri, DDS

  Acting Clinical Director
  Acoma-Canoncito-Laguna Service Unit
  San Fidel, New Mexico

Moderator(s)

• 

  Lela Luper, RN CIC, FAPIC

  Infection Preventionist
  Chickasaw Nation Department of Health, Oklahoma

  Nothing to disclose

While accreditation focus is increasing in dental infection control, there is uncertainty in the scientific literature regarding how the oral environment affects infection and how appropriate controls may differ from controls in a sterile clinical environment. In particular, dental HAI has not been clearly defined and differs from clinical definitions that include breach of sterile tissue as a fundamental requirement for most parenteral infections. The oral environment, on the other hand, has gradations of mucosal tissue abrasions and breaches, where there is no clear breach of sterile tissue. Further, saliva has known immunological properties as well as physical-chemical properties that exert a protective effect against infection.

Oral environment characteristics should drive a different approach for HAI surveillance and follow-up protocols, but there is little guidance on how surveillance in the dental environment should be conducted, or how follow-up protocols should be standardized. This session will focus on considerations IPs must give when addressing IPC issues in the dental environment and provide an overview of the implications for patient safety and IPC.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe how the oral environment differs from a sterile clinical environment with regard to susceptibility to infection.
• Describe physical-chemical and immunologic properties of saliva that have a protective effect against infection.
• Describe proposed HAI surveillance methods for the dental environment and control methods against specific dental environment hazards such as waterline biofilm.