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The main advantages of the new Lisa 500 autoclave
In the following interview, Elodie Laurent, hygiene manager at the « Espace Sourire » dental clinic at Six-Fours in France, talks about the advantages the new Lisa 500 autoclave brings to her everyday work, especially in so far as the made to measure cycle and traceability system are concerned.
Briefly describe your activities at the dental clinic
In the following interview, Elodie Laurent, hygiene manager at the « Espace Sourire » dental clinic at Six-Fours in France, talks about the advantages the new Lisa 500 autoclave brings to her everyday work, especially in so far as the made to measure cycle and traceability system are concerned.
I am in charge of the whole hygiene protocol from cleaning to sterilization, as well as traceability, for the 7 practitioners who work at the clinic. I have one sterilizer per dentist so in total we have 7 Lisa autoclaves. We wrap all instruments as recommended by the French guidelines. Since our devices undergo heavy usage, we replaced 4 devices last May and we were particularly impressed by the new W&H sterilizer, Lisa “fully automatic”.
What do they have that is so special?
The new type-B cycles reduce the cycle time according to the number of instruments to be sterilized. It’s as if Lisa weighed the load and adapted the duration of the cycle accordingly.
Is there an advantage for you in your daily work?
Of course! Big time savings – I save up to 80 hours per month. As you know, a Universal type-B cycle takes, or should I say took, about 45 minutes. At our clinic, each practitioner has their own instruments and wants them back in the shortest time possible. Because of this, I don’t often sterilize a full load for which the sterilization cycles are usually designed.
In fact, I reckon that this is probably the case in a lot of practices where most of the time a cycle for a medium load of 2 to 3kg would be sufficient. This new “made-to-measure” cycle is therefore perfect for our everyday activities. I would say that cycle times are reduced by 5 to 10 minutes for medium loads and by 15 to 20 minutes for emergencies like a tray with six handpieces and turbines.
Why not buy a small sterilizer then?
No, because on days with high patient turnover I do nevertheless need to carry out cycles with full loads. At the end of very busy days, I often fully load the sterilizers and go home knowing that I will find the instruments cold and dry the following morning. That for me is the real advantage of the new type-B cycles. It’s like having two sterilizers in one: one big and one small.
Are there any other advantages besides time savings?
The water and energy savings are not to be overlooked and the turnover of instruments is obviously quicker. I also guess that the fact that the sterilizer works for less means that its lifespan is increased and has less maintenance costs.
And what about traceability?
We aim to ensure full traceability for invasive treatment and surgery. In order to do this, the new Lisas are directly linked to a label printer called EliSafe. The procedure is really simple. At the end of the cycle, I check and accept the load, I identify myself and print the required number of labels directly from the sterilizer touch screen, which is very handy because I don’t have a computer in the sterilization room.
It’s then also really easy for the dentist to make the link to the patient file. During treatment and directly at the dental chair, the dentist finds the patients file on our server into which they scan the barcodes from the instrument packages used.
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