A Survey of Infection Control Procedure in Iranian Dental Practices

Objective: Dental procedures which involve contact with human blood, tissue or secretions, carry risk of cross contamination with a range of infectious agents. The principle of universal precaution is that all blood and blood contaminated body fluid should be considered potentially infectious , because the identification of patients with blood borne infection is not always possible. Methods: A 35 item questionnaire was distributed to all dentists attending the 5th & 6th International Congress of the Iranian Association of Endodontists. The questionnaire included items on demographic data and compliance with universal precautions. Data from responses of 715 dentists to the first survey and responses of 1227 dentists to the second survey were used for the analysis. Results: Respondents reported hepatitis B vaccination of dentists (95.3 % and 95.4% in both surveys, respectively) and all clinical staff (72.6% , 68.8%),willingness to treat an infectious patient with HBV (65.1%,67.1%), always wearing gloves and changing them after each patient(82.9%,90.5% ), mask (27%,35.2%), protective eye wear (66.9%,71%), heat sterilization of handpieces (15.8%,32%), flushing water line before treating each patient (75.9%,78.8%), using rubber dam (8.6%,9.6%) ,reusing of disposable saliva ejector tip (0.5%,16.2%), needle (0.4%,0.7%) and excellent compliance with infection control procedures (0.1%,0.2%). Conclusion: Dentists reports of compliance with infection control procedures and universal precaution increased between two years of this study (2002,2003), but most of dentists apparently have not adopted universal precaution. More education is needed to promote universal precautions.