Exposure to contaminated sharps among operators in dental surgery clinics

Abstract

Introduction: health care workers are constantly exposed to injuries attributable to sharps in their day-to-day work, and when this occurs there is a risk of contracting a disease that can be transmitted by blood or fluids containing in such tools. Objective: determining the prevalence of accidents attributable to sharps in students of Oral Surgery clinics. Method: a descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out among students of stomatology, who are coursing the Oral Surgery II component at the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua. It was performed a probabilistic sampling, and 25 people were selected as sample, 19 of them were applicable for the study. Result: the 94.7% of personnel surveyed reported suffered, at least, one accidental injury, and 36.8% of them on 2 to 4 times. The needle and scalpel were the objects with the highest incidence (21.2 % of event) in contrast there was low notification to the department or mentor in charge, since 42.1 % did not report the accident. Conclusions: most of the students have suffered 2 or more accidents with sharps, most frequently with scalpel and needle, corresponding from the exposure to risk of percutaneous accident event.