Is single use more cost-effective?

The increasing costs of infection control compliance in a dental practice are starting to see a rethink by dentists on the use of single use products. Masks and gloves are obviously used once and changed with each patient, whereas most other products are routinely cleaned and sterilized before reuse.

Single use products for broader applications are already well accepted in the hospital setting and both negate the need for reprocessing and also the broader issue of tracking the effectiveness of the sterilization process.

With a greater selection of single use products now available specifically designed for dentistry that prove very cost- and time-effective, many practitioners are starting to rethink the balance between reuse and single use.

"Single use products offer a great deal of advantages over reusable products in certain segments of clinical dentistry," said Perry Johnson, managing director of Queensland-based Medi Dent Disposable International (MDDI). "Whereas hospitals almost prefer single use products wherever possible, dentistry has been slower to explore this option.

"Hospitals tend to be very focused on controlling costs and go to great lengths to analyse the overall cost of all aspects of reusing a product and can then quantitatively compare this to the cost of a single use. This type of study is more onerous for a small dental practice to complete, so the tradition of reuse continues. Plus, the options for single use products for dentists have until recently been quite limited."

Five years ago, Mr Johnson established MDDI to start to redress the balance between reuse and single use in dentistry. The company's first products were single use "exam kits" for a range of applications that include varying combinations of double ended perio (sickle) probes; front face mirrors; tweezers; masks, bibs and cotton rolls on a plastic tray which are sealed and delivered sterile at point of use. More recently, the company has been manufacturing kits for oral surgery and implant surgery.

MDDI's Administration, sales and marketing are headquartered on Queensland's Sunshine Coast whereas their plant for the manufacture of sterile single use dental products is located in China.

"Single use products, first and foremost, need to be cost-effective," Mr Johnson said, "so manufacturing in China was essential to be able to create a market. As an offshoot to that, we also currently sell over 8 million kits per year to a handful of government dental hospitals including the largest in China.

"One of the initial issues that we faced was the quality of the single use products we were producing and this is essentially a reflection of the important role instruments play in dental practice. With research and perseverance, we are now able to deliver a quality product cost-effectively."

MDDI's first product was an exam kit containing a mirror, probe, tweezers, 2 masks, a bib, cotton rolls and tissues, all presented sterile on a single use plastic tray. To further keep costs low, bulk purchase was essential resulting in a price to the end user of US$1 per kit. This item, which is marketed by several well-known dental companies around the world under their own names, remains their number one seller.

"As we thought more and more like dentists, we were directed by market demand and have now created a line of single use and single wrapped instruments, offering considerably more versatility to all types of examination and treatments.

"Government hospitals are now literally buying container loads of instruments and realizing that the savings versus central sterilization are considerable. We get significant orders from Edinburgh and London and countries throughout Europe who are leading the way with an open mind to introduce wherever possible the use of single use instruments in packs.

"We are also keeping track of teaching techniques around the world within the universities and have now introduced into the market the first single use CPiTN ball tip perio probe.

"The recent introduction of the sterile gown and surgery packs are a natural strategy for us as the concepts of single use in surgery are already widely accepted.

"Further kits that we are looking into at the moment and will go to market with in the coming months will include single use burs.

"As economic times have become tougher, the efficacy of our products and their cost-effectiveness is proving to be an in-demand combination."

For more information and to order, see www.mddi.com.au