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Testing decontamination equipment in dental practice

12 mins read Decontamination/HTM 01-05
This article outlines some of the more important testing and validation that should be carried out to ensure decontamination equipment is functioning properly, can conform to the required standards and that the required data can be properly recorded by dental teams

Health Technical Memorandum 01-05: Decontamination in primary care dental practices (HTM 01-05) (Department of Health (DH), 2009a) has drawn together information from guidelines such as HTM 01-01: Decontamination of reusable medical devices (DH, 2009b), BS/EN/ISO standards for sterilisation, and the DH’s (2007)Decontamination of re-usable medical devices in the primary, secondary and tertiary care sectors (NHS and Independent providers).

HTM 01-05 gives advice and guidance for the dental team on how to test and maintain devices of decontamination. It recommends that devices should be maintained and serviced in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions.

In the case of some older models of sterilisers, testing instructions were not always supplied. If this is the case, the recommended periodic testing and servicing tables shown in HTM 01-05 should be followed.

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