A Comparative Study on the Different Ethyl Alcohol Disinfection Methods on Dental Casts

Abstract

Student clinicians are expected to encounter microorganisms during the process of thepatients’ treatment that can cause various diseases. In the Dentistry’s Prosthodontics clinicmanual, dental students should perform disinfection but no specific method wasrecommended. This study utilized the True experimental research design to evaluate theeffectiveness of two ethyl alcohol disinfection methods (spray and immersion) in thereduction of the bacterial colony count on dental casts and when running tap water is used torinse the dental casts. Informed consent from the 34 participants was first secured from eachof them. They were purposively selected based on their age and if they were partiallyedentulous with at least ten teeth present in each arch. Sixty eight dental casts were producedafter the impression taking of both their maxillary and mandibular arches, 34 of which werefor the experimental group and 34 were for the control group. The Streaking Plate Techniquewas used in determining the bacterial colony count on each dental cast before and after thedisinfection. The results were analyzed statistically using one-way ANOVA. Results revealedthat both the immersion and spray methods in which 70% ethyl alcohol was used as adisinfectant, were found to be independently effective as compared with tap water rinsingonly in reducing the bacterial colony count of each dental cast. However, when the two ethylalcohol disinfection techniques were compared to each other, results showed that there wereno significant statistical differences between them when the ability to reduce the bacterialcolony count on dental casts was observed. From the conclusions, it is recommended that theDentistry students consider using either the immersion or spray method with 70% ethylalcohol as a disinfectant on dental casts. Further studies may also be done to test differentkinds of alcohols with various concentrations.