Dental Burs Guide: What it is & How to sterilize it?
Dental burs are one of the most vital dental tools for dentists. When we purchase a great set of dental burs for our clinics, we may wonder that how to properly sterilize dental burs. Today, I will give an ultimate guide to briefly introduce the dental burs and give tips for sterilizing dental burs.
What are Dental Burs?
A dental bur is a vital tool in most dental surgery and procedure. They are built with different types for different purposes. Attached to the rotary dental handpiece, they can be used for cutting, grinding, and removing hard and soft tissue.
What are Dental Burs Used for?
Different dental burs are used for different procedures. Diamond dental burs are the most commonly used as a friction gripping tool because the physical features make the bur becomes the hardest and sharpest diamond burs. Made from tungsten carbide, dental carbide burs are a type of dental burs for cavity preparation, metal filling cutting, bone shaping, etc.
How to Properly Sterilize Dental Burs?
Sterilizing surgical dental burs is a priority among priorities. If the clinic doesn’t properly sterilize dental burs, the unclean burs would cause cross-infection. Here are some helpful tips for properly sterilizing dental burs.
Cleaning
Before sterilizing the dental burs, we need to primarily clean the burs, to ensure there is no left in the dental burs. Here are two major cleaning methods:
●Manual Cleaning: Firstly, we soak the burs in an enzymatic cleaner for 5 minutes to loosen debris. Secondly, we need to brush away the remaining debris and rinse them for two minutes. At last, we dry the burs with an absorbent lint-free towel.
●Ultrasonic Cleaning: diamond burs and carbide burs both may be cleaned by the ultrasonic machine. Before getting the ultrasonically cleaned, they need to be inserted in bur holders, in order to prevent damage.
Adding an enzymatic cleaner for a cycle cleaning of 10 minutes is recommended. After that, we should wash them with cold water for two minutes. In this method, we should operate the cleaning, in accordance with the manufacturers’ instructions.
Sterilization
After giving a proper cleaning for the dental burs, it’s time to sterilize the dental burs. In this procedure, we could use a dynamic air removal sterilization cycle to sterilize dental burs. Sterilize in an FDA-approved pouch at full cycle with a dwell at 132ºC / 270ºF minimum for 3 minutes.
Conclusion
All in all, we need to carefully practice each step of cleaning and sterilizing the dental burs. But the key point of cleaning and sterilization dental burs is following the instruction from the professional dental equipment manufacturers.
