Standard and Transmission-based Precautions: Best Practices for Dental Professionals

In 1985, the Centers for Disease Control [now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)] introduced the concept that all blood and body fluids that might be contaminated with blood should be treated as infectious.⁹⁷ Initial infection control measures were introduced largely because of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) epidemic; it was expanded to Universal Precautions to include other bloodborne pathogens such as hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV), which has been expanded in the intervening years to include other potentially infectious material (OPIM). Today infection prevention is predicated on Standard and Transmission based Precautions.^98-103 There are three categories of Transmission-based Precautions: contact precaution, droplet precautions, and airborne precautions associated with droplet nuclei.^101-104

Airborne precautions include administrative controls, environmental controls, and respiratory-protection controls. While typical outpatient dental facilities must incorporate administrative controls into their infection prevention protocol, they are not expected to be in full compliance with environmental and respiratory-prevention controls.