Interview By Tim Power


When it comes to infection control, Scotland is punching well above its weight, according to Glasgow Dental School’sProfessor Andrew Smith


Smith has some sympathy with the extra demands on dentists to ensure dental instruments are decontaminated to recognised International and European standards. However, although the “buck


stops” with dentists to ensure patient safety, the increasingly technical knowledge required to purchase and run decontam- ination equipment takes the profession outside areas they were trained to undertake. As one of the UK’s interna- tional experts on infection prevention and medical device decontamination, Prof Smith is concerned at the technical


30 Scottish Dental magazine


Coming clean A


s P r o f e s sor of Clinical Bacteriology at Glasgow Dental School, Andrew


expectations placed on dental surgeons and the level of support available to them. He wonders whether the public would find it acceptable if surgeons from other specialities, such as ENT, were responsible for the technical aspects of decontaminating their surgical equipment rather than perfecting their surgical skills. However, the big question in the sector is not the need for decontamination of surgical instruments to the required standards – that is a given – but for a consensus on how best to implement the standards to which dentists should be working to. This debate has now been


taken up by the Association for European Safety & Infection


Control in Dentistry (AESIC), which has appointed Professor Smith as its chairman. Professor Smith explained


the role of the organisation: “AESIC(www.aesic.eu) was set up to be the leading European source of information on safety, instrument decontamination and infection prevention for everyone involved in the dental field, ranging from academia and decontamination equipment manufacturers to policy-makers and clinicians. “As we are a relatively new


organisation, our first objective is to review the different European norms the EU has produced regarding hygiene, disinfection and sterilisation and assess how these have been implemented throughout the EU. We intend to use this


information to define a common EU set of recommen- dations concerning hygiene and infection control in dentistry, and learn from examples of good practice that could be more widely adopted through- out Europe.” As a qualified dentist whose


interest in microbiology has taken him to the top of his specialism in academia, Professor Smith understands the demands placed on dental practices to ensure adequate decontamination and infection prevention. He said: “Dentists naturally


want to undertake dental treatment on patients and be freed from administrative and technical roles not directly linked to hands-on treatment. “Infection prevention is high


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