It's All About The PPE

We all now live in truly unique times. Way back in December 2019 we were all celebrating the holidays and the New Year. To be honest, things were pretty good. But then the bottom seemed to fall out of our American way of life.

Enter COVID-19, a pandemic that started with just one person in the state of Washington and now has affected millions of Americans throughout our country.

As a dentist, we were told that we had to close our offices effective March 16, 2020. That was one incredible day.  I had to remind myself that I had never taken off more than two weeks at one time, and that was on my honeymoon.

Fast forward to now, and boy, has dentistry changed. 

When you arrive at the office the first thing you will notice is that both myself and my staff are wearing very complicated and complete PPE (Personal Protective Equipment).

Rather than just entering the office as you have done in the past, we will ask you to sit in your car until your appointment time. This is done in order to limit the number of patients in the office at any one time. When you do arrive, we will take your temperature, obtain your oxygen percentage, double-check your COVID-19 Patient Form, and then ask you to sanitize your hands. Lots to do even before you enter the treatment room.

In the treatment room, you will also notice several additions. Every room in the office now has an air purifier circulating air throughout the day. Additionally, we have purchased an Extraoral Evacuation System which is used to remove and reduce the aerosols that are created during the use of the high-speed hand-piece.

Finally, in order to minimize impressions, we have decided to use a very sophisticated scanner instead of those gooey impressions. Much like a video camera, this device can take many images of your teeth and then create a three-dimensional image that can be used by our lab to fabricate your restoration.