instruments

by Trish Walraven

This Good Friday is quite the contemplative one, blending the best of tree-hugging and cross-hugging in one wonderful day off of work for most of us.

So when I got a notice in my email box from Hu-Friedy in celebration of Earth Day today, I immediately made the phone call to get our practice started up on the Environdent program. Heaven knows our junk drawer is hard to open, with all the broken cavitron scaler inserts, bladeless curettes, explorers with gnarled tips, bald probes and scratched-up mouth mirrors. It’s a vast nubby world in there, but the hoarder in me just wouldn’t let any of it go, just in case American Pickers made a visit to our office.

Now that I’m signed up, Hu-Friedy’s going to send a bunch of boxes so that I can make our junk drawer look more nice and neat, like the one in their line drawing below. <!>

This is how the Environdent program works:

And HA! I’m going to get a pretty good deal for all that hoarding. For every 12 instruments that we send them to be recycled, we’ll earn one free Hu-Friedy instrument of our choice. When you look at our drawer, that means we’ll be able to get enough explorers to last about ten years.

You too? Well then give them a call next week (they were nice and let everyone go home early so don’t call today) and get your office set up on the Environdent program. For over 15 years Hu-Friedy has been recycling over three tons of surgical steel every year. Request your free Environdent kit at 1-800-HU-FRIEDY (1-800-483-7433), and feel good this Earth Day for keeping stuff out of the landfills, for justifying your obsessions, or for simply being a tightwad.

Didja Know? Hu-Friedy was founded by Austrian immigrant Hugo Friedman in 1908, whose grandson still owns the company today. So Happy Passover to everyone as well!

Now this is just sad. It seems as though a perfect storm of poorly-maintained handpieces, numb lips, and inattentive dentists has come together in a flurry of reports that patients are getting burned at the dental office.

Really burned, not like they’re getting ripped off burned. First, second, and third degree burns. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is so concerned, they’ve even created a letter for you to send to your handpiece manufacturer, since they’re not naming names as to whose products are heating up the most.

Most of the manufacturers already received this letter last month in response to the FDA’s new safety alert. In the meantime, they are recommending that clinicians:

Are vigilant about maintaining electric dental handpieces and electric oral bone-cutting handpieces according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
Verify with the manufacturer the appropriate routine service interval for your dental practice, based on the actual use of your electric dental handpieces or electric intraoral bone-cutting handpieces.
Train personnel to properly clean and maintain the electric dental handpieces or electric intraoral bone-cutting handpieces.
Develop a method for tracking maintenance and routine service for each dental handpiece or electric intraoral bone-cutting handpiece.
Examine the electric dental handpiece attachments and electric intraoral bone-cutting handpiece attachments prior to use. Do not use worn drills or burs.
Do not use poorly maintained electric dental handpieces or electric intraoral bone-cutting handpieces.
Report overheating to the manufacturer.

Elvis would have been ashamed that his song title had been so poorly used to get your attention in this article.

So make sure that its presence is not in vain.

Happy Earth Day to my instrument drawer

Hunka Hunka Burnin’ Handpiece

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