Advances in infection epidemiology and control in dental healthcare settings

Abstract

Guidelines for the control of infection in dental healthcare settings became necessary since the eighties, following shocking events, such as the lethal outbreaks of hepatitis B among dental patients and the episode of the Floridian dentist who infected five patients with HIV. Guidelines were produced by the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and were periodically updated. Their success was and actually is remarkable, as demonstrated by the facts that they were adopted by many national professional organizations in the world and that, following their implementation, cases of infection transmission from dental healthcare workers (DHWs) to patients and vice versa reported from all over the world drastically decreased. Guidelines, initially based on the precautionary principle, are updated following the advances in scientific and technical research and are based on the assessment of the true risk for infection for DHWs and patients and on the design of effective control measures. Nevertheless, guidelines are far from being perfect, since many questions remained unanswered and many problems unresolved. The papers presented at the international workshop 'Advances in Infection Epidemiology and Control in Dental Healthcare Settings' (February 9th 2013), organized by the Department of Public Health and Infectious Diseases of the Sapienza University of Rome (Italy), sought to bring some light in the shadowy areas of this field. There are four steps which lead to an effective infection control: the first of them is an efficient surveillance system of infections acquired in dental healthcare settings The second step is the specificity of scientific research. The third step is that guidelines must be applied by DHWs, who, therefore, must be involved in guideline design and in recommendation release. The fourth and final step is that infection control guidelines must be transnational.