Sponsored Content: Why Water Matters to a Dental Practice

Almost nothing is more essential than water in a dental practice, and ensuring your patients receive the cleanest, highest-quality water can make all the difference in your treatment. Consider water as an instrument in the dental practice. It must be maintained and regularly monitored. Managing water in the operatory can be particularly challenging when there are many pieces and parts to consider in keeping the water flowing smoothly and cleanly. Thankfully, Solmetex offers a full, end-to-end solution, enabling clean, safe water flow throughout the practice, in a way that makes it as easy as possible to manage.

Typical Water Use in a Dental Practice

Per Scott Snyder, chief marketing officer at Solmetex, an average dental practice uses around 57,000 gallons of water each year. With that in mind, it’s pertinent to ensure the water used for daily operations is not only clean, but also runs efficiently.

“That’s a lot of water,” Snyder says. “It’s flowing through all kinds of high precision equipment, and we tend to take water quality for granted.”

Municipal water quality has been declining for years in many areas, due to aging infrastructure as well as depleted aquifers reaching “the bottom of the barrel.” Even with good source water, or using distilled water, water quality and safety are challenging to achieve and maintain. Per Snyder, around 31% of all water tests in dental practices fail, despite best efforts by the dental team to treat and maintain.

“It’s really hard for dental offices to control water quality and water safety. There are 1000s of steps required over the course of a year for even just a 4-chair practice,” Snyder says. “That’s where Solmetex and Sterisil have tried to find a better solution––to make it easier with fewer steps.”

Efficiency Boosters

Solmetex has a variety of offerings that bring value to the dental practice while providing valuable waterline safety features for patients and practitioners.

• Sterisil: Sterisil uses safe, environmentally conscious silver ion technology to remove bacteria from the dental unit water. Sterisil can bring the practice’s bacteria count down to 10 colony forming units (CFU), compared to other straw products rated at 200 CFU, and the Environmental Protection Agency minimum standard of 500 CFU. Per Snyder, this patented technology gets the practice’s water to where it needs to be. “This 20 times greater efficacy in controlling bacteria gives practices an added ‘safety margin’ for keeping bacteria at bay, and within the safe zone over time,” Snyder says. “It’s also less prone to human error, which is one way that bacteria enter the system. It’s just simpler and easier for the staff to maintain, because one straw lasts 365 days and doesn’t require daily maintenance like iodine straws, or tablets. This can mean literally hundreds of fewer steps required per year, per operatory.”

• DryShield: Solmetex offers modern isolation technology through DryShield, a device that keeps treatment sites dry and clean. It works in 4 different ways—as a high-suction evacuator, a bite blocker, a tongue shield, as well as protecting the oral pathway. “It’s got a unique design that makes it very comfortable for the user, and because of this design, it frees up the hands of the staff and the dentist, so they can perform 2-handed, 2-quadrant dentistry,” Snyder says. “As a result, the device generates between 25% and 40% reduction in procedure time when it’s used during a typical clinical procedure.” DryShield has a comfortable silicone bite block, making it especially useful for pediatric patients.

• PowerScrub: This eco-friendly vacuum line cleaner brings a new approach to helping staff keep lines free and clear, to maintain proper suction. Snyder says, “PowerScrub is the fastest-growing line cleaner because it uses biology to basically eat the gunk coating the lines, instead of using surfactants that basically just lubricate over the problem as other line cleaners do.”

• NXT Hg5 Amalgam Separator: The Hg5 is the leader in safe, efficient extraction of toxic mercury, protecting public waterways from this hazardous material. The Hg5 series is said to prevent more than 5.1 tons of heavy metals from being released into public waterways every year. In addition to the Hg5 amalgam separators, there is also the NXT Tankless DryVac, a water-free vacuum system that enables easy and efficient waste removal. Without needing to use water, DryVac not only has a low operating cost, but it also saves the practice (and planet) by reducing water use and water waste.

Providing an End-to-End Water Solution

Solmetex’s long line of dental water solutions aims to make maintenance and operations efficient, safer, and smarter than ever before, without adding undue stress for practice owners and staff.

“It is important to protect the community in which the dental practice works, to make sure we’re not doing harm. We also think that if we consider dental water as a connected system, requiring a connected solution, everything works better,” Snyder says. “It starts with making the process easier in the dental practice, and with really considering the water in the dental practice as a connected system.”

And not only does Solmetex provide the tools to enable this connected system, but it also provides clinicians and practice owners with the support and confidence to use them effectively.

“We provide the service and support with somebody who will answer the phone and help you troubleshoot. Nobody else does that in this category,” Snyder says. “We’re built as 1 company to provide that end-to-end water solution for dentistry. It’s a simpler, easier solution. I can’t underscore those words enough. That’s what dentistry wants–they want simpler solutions that make things easier for their team, and to ensure safety and a positive experience for their patients and community.”