What generally scares people? Heights, public speaking, spiders, snakes, etc. What do all of these have in common? They are things that we can see. We usually don’t give as much thought to things we can’t see like air, radiation, gravity, sound, electricity etc. But the things we don’t see can often have the same levels of danger, if not more, on us and should make us think and consider them.
One of the things that you can’t see and is frequently passed over are microorganisms. The COVID-19 pandemic certainly shed light on the world of microorganisms, their dangers, and their elusiveness. It was amazing to see that something that we couldn’t see could have such a profound effect on our way of life and how we interact in our world.
In dental and healthcare facilities we aren’t completely oblivious to microorganisms. We are taught about them in school and hear about contamination in infection control continuing education classes. But if you are like me, this tends to be a dry topic as little has changed in the last 40 years.
There is a new technology on the market that is “rapidly” changing the healthcare industry when it comes to microorganisms. This is rapid microbial testing. Before we jump into this new technology let’s do a quick review.
Microorganisms are life forms that are so small they can only be viewed under a microscope. They include things like bacteria, viruses, and fungi. We know there are good and bad microorganisms. You can have fungus like Penicillium chrysogenum which produces penicillin and has great healing properties. You can have good bacteria like Lactobacillus that play a variety of important roles in maintaining a healthy human microbiome. But without a microscope, there is no way to find and decipher which microorganisms are good or bad. Additionally, you can’t maintain cleanliness by killing only bad microorganisms and keeping the good ones.
If you remember from your biology days, one way of seeing if there were microorganisms on a surface was by taking a swab and wiping the dirty swab on a petri dish, waiting a couple of days, and seeing if any colonies of microorganisms grew. If you wanted more scientific and accurate insights you could either put your petri dish under a microscope or send them off to a professional laboratory to have them analyzed and quantified. This is still done today, but it is expensive and can take weeks to gather samples, package them, mail them, wait for the lab to do their analysis, and then wait for the results. By the time you get the results back, you are really getting a historical result, not current data.
Now there is a process out there called rapid microbial testing. This is part of our proprietary MediClean and Shield process. Our company has learned the science, streamlined the process, and brought it to the healthcare and dental market.
Today we can use the science of ATP to speed up the testing and reporting of microorganisms. ATP is an energy molecule that is found in all living cells. Therefore, we can take swab samples, incubate the culture for a brief period to simulate the petri dish, and then measure the ATP from microbial contamination on the swab with a luminometer. This new process has cut the time from days and weeks down to hours. As part of our proprietary MediClean and Shield process, we will come in take the swab samples and can have the results to you in as short as 8 hours, but generally within 24-48 hours depending on scheduling. This allows you to know in real time what kind of contamination is in your facility and be able to take a proactive approach to cleaning, rather than finding out that your faciity was dirty weeks ago.
For further reading on ATP and luminometers see these articles:
What is ATP and why does it matter?
How luminometers are used in long term infection control
With the advent of 5G internet, streaming services, and same-day delivery in other industries, it is about time we have real-time data in the infection control industry. This industry hasn’t seen any appreciable market shifting change in 40 years. Can you imagine where we would be if computer technology had not changed in 40 years? To put it in perspective, in the early 1980s IBM released their first personal computer, and the operating system software that came with the computer, which was newly released, was DOS (if anyone even remembers DOS).
This new infection control technology is taking us from the days of DOS to the days of 5G internet with virtually real-time data on infection control. This is why rapid microbial testing is such a game changer.
If you are a cutting-edge facility that wants to bring your infection control to the 21st century, give us a call today to schedule a free consultation on how this new science and technology can help you clean, protect, and monitor your facility.
Stay one step ahead!
MCS helps dental and healthcare facilities become safe places for patients and staff to work and seek medical and dental attention. We help our clients by not only providing long-term disinfecting and infection control protection solutions for their facilities, but also by testing and verifying the cleanliness of those facilities. Every office we have been in has had some level of contamination, and our clients have seen a 100% decrease in microbial activity and an average decrease of 75% in their ATP levels. If you would like help in getting your office cleaner and safer, and have objective verifiable data to prove it, call us today at 469-778-7550 or contact us here.
