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For hygienists, a crucial part of effective patient treatment is to examine your tools.

This prevents you from discovering issues before they need to be addressed. The last thing you need is tools that cause your patients discomfort and slow down the flow of your work. Invest time to make sure you have the right instruments in your set-up, that they’re in good condition – and if not – that you can sharpen or replace them right away.

First things first: let’s make sure you’re using the right instrument for the job.

Make Sure You’re Using the Right Instruments

One of the smartest moves you can make as you begin your audit is to consider your patient population to foresee what new or different tools you can recommend to your dentist and/or office manager, ensuring your practice is providing the best care possible.

Conducting an Instrument Inventory
Consider how your daily procedural needs may have changed over the past year. Did you notice that your favourite 204s instrument could benefit from a longer handle to reach the interproximal areas of some patients? Or if you performed more debridements last year, it may be a good idea to add tools that make your already-complex procedures simpler. For example, adding a more robust shank or right and left ultrasonic inserts.

Taking Stock of Who You Serve
Timing and changing patient populations are considerations when conducting an instrumental audit. Perhaps you know a new senior care center is opening nearby. Do you have a reliable supply of tools needed for dentures and root canals to serve them? Or if you work for a recently consolidated practice you could inherit patients who have neglected their preventive visits and may need more acute care? If so, it could be time to ensure you have tools like implant drivers of various sizes that are up to the task.

Now that you have identified what instruments you may need for 2024, let’s take a look at the condition of the instruments you already have.

What to Look for in Evaluating Dental Instruments

Identify the Causes of Spots
Each instrument requires a different lens for evaluating what needs attention.

If you’re evaluating tools for diagnostic treatments, spotting reddish-brown or black spots could be signs of corrosion that could cause problems with sterilization, spread to other instruments, or be the catalyst for infection. In this case, remove these instruments from your set-up immediately.

Those spots on your instrument could also mean that bioburden was not adequately removed during the cleaning, disinfecting, or sterilizing processes. This calls for a further reprocessing – and possibly a closer look at your staff’s training or procedures.

Scratched Mirrors
Dental mirrors can get scratched for myriad reasons – with every incident they lose value. Scratched mirrors may feel like a minimal issue. But if the image isn’t reflecting enough light, or if it’s giving you an incomplete or distorted picture, you will likely have to continually readjust its angle which interrupts the flow of your procedure. Or worse, it may cause a less sound diagnosis.

Mirror heads are easily replaceable and worth the peace of mind you will find when you have a brighter, clearer, and more reflective source of truth alongside your chair.

HuFriedyGroup’s High-Definition Mouth Mirrors feature a proprietary coating that are more sensitively attuned to light and color that allow for increased visibility in whatever procedure you’re performing. Tests of these HD mirrors found an 113% improvement for reflection than other front surface mirrors and was 50% brighter. The mirrors are scratch-resistant and come in single or doublesided versions.

The HD Black Line Mirror is the ultimate tool for reducing glare up to 80% with its Diamond Like Carbon coating that provides quicker and more accurate visibility of the mouth than the non-coated stainless-steel mirror head and handle.

Bent Probes
Accurate readings depend on probes that haven’t been bent. Since probes are used on virtually every patient, it’s common that they will be bent with frequent use, accidents, or mishandling. To detect if the dental probe’s tips has been bent beyond their inherent manufactured curve, examine the markings on the tool which are finely calibrated for precision.

Resin probe tips provide better visibility but require regular replacement as the markings fade over time.

HuFriedyGroup offers Qulix™ Probes for hygienists seeking more clarity, with laser-etched markings that don’t chip, flake or fade. Colorvue™ Probes also are made with vivid yellow tips with black markings for increased color contrast from intraoral structures and can be used for both natural and implant dentition. The twist-on design allows for easy replacement of worn tips. Colorvue™ Markings wear with normal use, so it’s recommended to replace tips about every 30 sterilization cycles.

Dull or Bent Explorers
Explorers are flexible and stronger than they may seem, but they still aren’t immune to damage and deformation especially caused during reprocessing. The edges of broken or deformed explorers can become blunt surfaces that may cause less tactile sensitivity and hinder adaptation to tooth surfaces and, more importantly, may cause discomfort for your patients.

HuFriedyGroup Explorers are hand-crafted from Duraspond steel, a metal alloy that is specially blended to provide flexibility and resilience to cater to even the most precise of diagnostic procedures.

Ultrasonic Scaling Insert Tips
We all know the frustration of worn insert tips. They significantly hamper your ability to remove deposits and plaque, impeding water delivery. The typical life of an ultrasonic scaling insert is 9-12 months, though it’s recommended to check monthly for signs of wear to ensure your scaling is as efficient as possible.

Suggestions for Evaluating Insert Tips
Using your loupe, fully rotate your insert tip to look for wear from every angle. For ultrasonic inserts, make sure to check that the leaf stock is nested – not bent or warped, which compromises the vibration.

Luckily, inserts from the same pack don’t always need replacing at once. Follow these guidelines to assess their wear and tear, and need to be replaced:

For piezoelectric tips, if the tip:

• Extends beyond the blue line, it is at optimum efficiency. It can continue to be used.
• Touches the blue line, it is 25% less efficient. This is a sign that you need to reorder, ensuring enough time for replacements to arrive before the tip is no longer usable.
• Touches the red line, it has experienced a 50% efficiency loss. It should be discarded.
• For magneto strictive inserts, if the insert shows a:
• 1mm loss, it can result in a 25% less efficiency. Reorder now to get your replacements before the insert needs to be discarded.
• 2mm loss, it may result in 50% less efficiency and should be discarded.

Don’t forget to assess the O-ring seal for cracks and drying. Make sure you also look for water leaking from the handle and bends in the water delivery tube.

Scalers and Curettes
A curette’s very design is aimed at the comfort of patients undergoing subgingival scaling, so if a scaler is more than 20% worn, set it aside for recycling. Replacing the curette at this time is crucial because it is vulnerable to breaking during use which puts the patient, the clinician, and the practice at risk.

For testing your scalers and curettes accurately use specialized test sticks. HuFriedyGroup offers test sticks made from hardened acrylic plastic.

Scalers and curettes that are still usable may need sharpening, but the way they are sharpened is vital to their ability to be reused.

Keys to Proper Dental Instrument Maintenance

Proper maintenance of your dental instruments will keep the risk of infection at bay and allow you to place a renewed focus on patient care.

Keep Dental Scalers and Curettes Sharp

Sharpening your dental scalers and curettes is a multifaceted process, especially as many of those instruments have multiple bends in the shank. During sharpening, the blade angle requires the correct alignment, grit, lubrication, and proficiency to do the task at hand. Here’s how:

Use the Correct Angulation
The correct position for sharpening your scalers and curettes is achieved by placing the stone at an internal angle between 70° to 80°. The degree of the internal angle makes or breaks the quality of the sharpening: if it’s less than 70°, there’s too much angulation, making the blade weak and prone to dulling quickly. An angle greater than 80° is insufficient and causes the blade to become bulky.

Choose the Right Grit
Depending on the sharpening needs of each blade, you will typically have three types of stones to choose from with a range of grits available.

Stone and grit selections include:

• Arkansas Stone - a natural stone with a fine grit
• India or “I” Stone - a synthetic stone made from aluminum oxide crystals with fine to coarse grits
• Ceramic Stone - a synthetic stone in either fine, medium, or coarse grits
• Diamond Sharpening Cards are available in extra fine to medium grits. They resist ditching and grooving and will not shatter if dropped.

Lubricate During Sharpening
Use oil when using Arkansas stones to sharpen your instrument. This will ensure that the tiny metal shavings float away instead of becoming embedded in the stone. Ceramic stones, “I” stones and diamond sharpening cards can be used dry or with water.

Practice Sharpening
The more skillful you are in sharpening blades, the more accurate your results.

As you practice, remember that scalers wear out over time – the tip gets thinner with each sharpening. Regularly used and sharpened scalers or curettes should be replaced every six to nine months.

To learn more about sharpening best practices, visit our Scaler Resources Library.

Protect Instruments with Cassettes

Properly cleaning, sterilizing, and securely storing your instruments is the surest way to lengthen their lifespan. Cassettes provide the perfect solution.

HuFriedyGroup’s cassette-based Instrument Management System keeps your vital tools sheltered and secure in a protective layer that prevents bending, breaking, or losing your instruments during the reprocessing cycle.

Extend the Life of Your Inserts

Ultrasonic inserts need special attention to maintain quality over time. In our article, “Ultrasonic Inserts: Tips for Best Results,” we offer suggestions:

• Giving yourself flexibility with a range of ultrasonic inserts that best fit the procedure – instead of relying on one insert that will wear more quickly and remove deposits inefficiently.
• Getting the longest life from your insert tips with frequent measurement helps you keep track of when a replacement is required.
• Leveraging best practices to extend the life of your ultrasonic tips, like taking advantage of instrument cassettes.

How Often Should You Audit?

Assessing your instruments during routine audits allows you to be one step ahead, knowing which instruments will soon need sharpening or replacing.

Refinement of audit procedures help make the process feel less burdensome. Defining the cadence of audits can be key. Depending on how busy your practice is, you may find that monthly audits are too frequent – but annually is too long to wait.

A good rule of thumb is to plan for a semi-annual audit, since some instruments need replacement twice a year depending on which variables are at play, including what patient populations you’re serving, and how you maintain your instruments, and how often you use them.

Make Sure to Audit Every Instrument, Every Time

Gather each and every one of your instruments together as you begin your audit. No matter how old your instrument is, never assume it’s in proper condition, and inspect it. For diagnostic instruments over a year old, we recommend performing a thorough assessment now. HuFriedyGroup instruments conveniently list the month and year they were manufactured on a stamped code.

As you carefully look your instruments over for wear, separate them into categories based on their condition to speed up next steps depending on whether they require reprocessing, sharpening, or replacement.

If you’re delaying your next instrumentation audit, keep in mind how it much easier your work feels when you have the right, high-quality instruments that are sharp and performing well. Regular audits help ensure peace of mind, knowing your tools are ready to perform at the same level of excellence that you expect of yourself. Your procedures will run more smoothly, leaving patients satisfied after their visit and encouraging them to come back regularly for the excellent care they deserve.