Several weeks ago, I came back to my office after finishing with a patient, and I had an alert from the CNN app on my phone. It read, “CDC says vaccinated people no longer need to wear a mask inside.” That was a moment, in my head. It had been around 14 months since the pandemic started, and finally, some light at the end of the tunnel.
I just sat and thought about what the last 14 months had been like. I thought about how I had not been sick…at all. Not even a head cold. I thought maybe some of these safety precautions aren’t so bad after all. HIV made dentistry step up their blood-borne pathogens game. SARS-CoV-2 has made us step up our airborne pathogens game. We should be thinking about what we should carry forward from the last 14 months. Cleanliness and disinfection should be chief among those.
When dental practices started reopening in May of 2020, I noticed an interesting trend. Dentists were cooking up their own hypochlorous acid (HOCl) and using hardware store foggers to disseminate it in their offices. These foggers looked like Ghostbusters proton packs. Big. Clunky. Ryobi. No shade at Ryobi, but they aren’t exactly a dental equipment stalwart.
Fortunately, a huge name in the dental equipment industry stepped up and made a much more elegant solution. Zyris recently released their Operatory Fogger.
Thankfully, you won’t look like Egon Spengler with the Zyris Operatory Fogger. This ergonomic fogger hooks up to your quick-connect port on your delivery unit. That quick-connect port should put out between 60-80 psi for best results. To operate the Zyris Operatory Fogger, attach a bottle of the Zyris Disinfectant. No more home brewing your own HOCl, Sam Adams. Zyris takes care of that for you, making this a turnkey solution. Once the fogger is loaded, connect it to the quick-connect port and start fogging.
Fogging with HOCl allows you to quickly disinfect all contact surfaces in your practice from bacteria and viruses, including SARS-CoV-2. This includes tables, chairs, dental equipment, and basically everything in an operatory. The best part about fogging is how quickly and efficiently an entire room can be disinfected. This makes it easy to do in between patients. To me, that is the killer feature of this moving forward. If we can easily and efficiently disinfect an entire operatory in just a few seconds, why wouldn’t we? Why would this not be the standard of care? It should be!
Included in the Zyris Operatory Fogger kit is the fogger unit handpiece with a 15-foot coiled hose, adapters for various quick-connect systems, a wall-mount kit for the handpiece, an air gauge kit to test your line, and a bottle of Zyris Disinfectant. You will need to keep some stock of the Zyris Disinfectant. Their website has a quick calculator tool of how much you will need monthly based on the number of patients you see. They have subscription options for reordering as well as bulk discounts. They make it easy to stay stocked up on the stuff we will need to keep our operatories clean.
Just because we can start to see the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, it doesn’t mean that we should just go back to 2019 in every way possible. Keeping our offices clean and safe should continue to be a priority. The Zyris Operatory Fogger can help you with that. Double over the center fielder’s head for Zyris!
