Single-use or disposable devices such as syringe needles, prophy cups, saliva ejector tips, air/water syringe tips and brushes, plastic orthodontic brackets and the like are designed to be used on a single patient and then discarded after use. Single-use devices in dentistry are usually not heat-tolerant and cannot be reliably cleaned. Cotton rolls, gauze, irrigating syringes should be sterile at the time of use.

Certain devices or instruments such as burs, endodontic files or broaches may prove difficult to clean. In addition to this, repeated processing can negatively affect the efficiency of cutting instruments. For this reason it may be practical to treat these devices as single-use items. Should they be used for more than one time, they should be cleaned thoroughly and then sterilized.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

Single-Use (Disposable) Devices
1. Use single-use devices for one patient only and dispose of them appropriately.
2. Burs and endodontic files, reamers and similar instruments should ideally be treated as single-use devices.