From Volume 40, Issue 8, October 2013 | Pages 630-636
A literature search revealed six laboratory-based microbial challenge studies which support the opinion that oil contamination does not prevent successful sterilization of the lumen of dental handpieces. However, a detailed appraisal of these papers revealed lack of detail in the cleaning methods used prior to sterilization and none of the papers considered the risks of prion contamination.
A literature search was performed with the assistance of librarians at the BDA Information Centre using OVID search facility on Medline, EMBASE, CINALH and The Cochrane Library.
On the suggestion of the reviewer, the BDA Information Centre provided a list of publications on the subject of the history of sterilization from the Index of Dental Literature from 1896 to 1949. This produced key papers from the Lancet and the authors, Perkins and Fallon.
A12 BDA advice sheet produced guidance on infection control from the devolved countries forming the UK.
Two search parameters are listed in Table 1. The selected papers produced 21 references. The reference lists of each of the 21 papers were consulted and further papers selected. The references of the references were examined.
An internet search of PubMed and Google Scholar was performed using the keywords ‘sterilization’, ‘decontamination’, ‘dental’, ‘handpiece’, ‘lumen’, ‘prion’, ‘internal’, ‘disinfection’. This led to a number of useful lectures published online.
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