Prospective survey of percutaneous injuries in orthodontic assistants

This prospective diary survey provides documentation concerning the occurre nce of percutaneous injury among orthodontic chairside assistants in the Un ited States and Canada. A 20-day period was used to collect data regarding exposure to injuries; 693 valid responses were received from orthodontic as sistants. Most chairside assistants in this sample work in a solo practice and average 33 hours per week treating patients for 49 weeks per year. The study identified a percutaneous injury rate of 0.11 for chairside assistant s during this period, a rate than can be extrapolated to 1.4 episodes of pe rcutaneous injury per year per chairside assistant. The majority of these i njuries occurred outside the mouth. Those assistants with longer orthodonti c experience had a lower injury rate than those with less experience. The r ate of percutaneous injury to dental assistants was slightly higher than th e annual rate (0.99) for orthodontists monitored by means of a companion su rvey and slightly lower than the rate (1.9) for a smaller sample of orthodo ntists from the American Dental Association survey of 1995. The annual rate of percutaneous injury for orthodontic chairside assistants is less than h alf of that observed for dentists in general practice.