Dr. Tom Giacobbi welcomes special guest Dr. David Reznik to discuss Reznik's work in ensuring that every dental practice tests its dental unit waterlines to ensure the safety of patients and team members.
Listen to some thoughts from Dr. Reznik below.
Video transcript
"The first thing I'd like to get across is why are we testing the waterlines?
"What we don't know is what was in the waterlines until we had outbreaks that impacted children? So, it could be Pseudomonas, it could be Legionella. And the organism we're most worried about is Mycobacterium abscesses, it's a non-TB [tuberculosis] form. So we really need to know what are we putting in our children's mouths and our adults' mouths? As people get older, they get more immunocompromised.
"We can prevent these terrible events that have happened in Georgia, that have happened in California, that have happened in different parts of the country, and they're not even aware at this point.
"One of the most important things I've done as president of the Georgia Board of Dentistry was come up with a specific rule on dental unit waterlines. We had an impact in 2015. Again, we had something happen in 2022 related to dental unit waterlines. We put some education in place in 2022, then another case in '24. So that wasn't working for us.
"So I decided to work with my colleagues on the Georgia Board of Dentistry to come up with our own dental unit waterline rule that would be something that we could actually check offices on. So it's a simple rule: You just need to test on a regular basis. We don't tell you how to do it. Quarterly testing -- that's important -- and you need to keep logs for five years."
