A RANDOMIZED, DOUBLE BLIND, CONTROLLED EVALUATION OF EFFECTIVENESS OF DIFFERENT TECHNIQUES FOR PRE-STERILIZATION OF DRILL BITS USED IN A HOSPITAL-BASED ORAL AND MAXILLOFACIAL SURGERY DEPARTMENT.

Introduction: Infection control is a major issue in medicine and dentistry because of concern over communicable diseases transmitted in health care settings. Both dental personnel and patients are always at risk of communicating diseases during treatment. The use of effective infection control procedures in the dental office will prevent cross contamination that may extend to dentist, dental staff, dental technician and patients. The current study evaluated the effectiveness of different techniques for Pre-sterilization of burs used in a Hospital-based Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery department. In material and method, four groups A, B, C, and D were made and sterilization of drill bits was done by mechanical scrubbing in group A, 2% glutaraldehyde in group B, 5 % phenol in group C and autoclaving in group D. After which microbiological evaluation of the drill bits are done in Blood Agar media and the microbial colony were counted in each group. Result: The result showed that for Group A the mean bacterial colony count is 62.10 ? 4.17, 72.80 ? 4.61 and 81.30 ? 5.35 at 24, 48 and 72 hours respectively. For group B the mean bacterial colony count was 4.50 ? 0.52, 5.70 ? 0.48 and 6.20 ? 0.91 at 24, 48 and 72 hours respectively. For group C the mean bacterial colony count was 2.80 ?0.78, 3.50 ? 0.52 and 3.80 ? 0.63 at 24, 48 and 72 hours respectively. For group D mean bacterial colony count was zero at all three intervals. Conclusion: Autoclave was highly effective in sterilization of drill bits followed by 5% phenol and 2% glutaraldehyde and manual scrubbing was not an effective method for sterilization of drill bits.