References

Prosthodontic Associates is one of Australia’s most highly-skilled prosthodontic teams and a trailblazer in state-of-the-art infection protection. The dental clinic, located in the centre of Melbourne, has been awarded as a MELAG Hygiene Partner for excellence in instrument reprocessing and patient protection.

The practice maintains a close relationship with the University of Melbourne Dental School, the three clinicians Philip Yeung, Gordon Burt and Kunal Pandya teach there on prosthodontic and associated dental topics. With tremendous expertise and a passion for infection prevention and infection control Amanda Brown, Speaker, Director and Principal Presenter of Iced Infection Control Education, advised the team planning the most efficient hygiene workflows.

Prosthodontic Associates equipped the decontamination room with a fully validated integrated MELAG System Solution - MELAtherm 10 for safe and efficient cleaning and disinfection, the rotary sealing device MELAseal Pro for fast wrapping of instruments, cutting-edge Premium-Class MELAG steam sterilizers and the MELAtrace software for documentation, load-management and batch-approval. Printed barcode labels facilitate traceability of the individual load elements. The labels are subsequently scanned and added to the patient administration system.

Prosthodontic Associates relies on the MELAG System providing a safe, perfectly traceable and efficient process flow ensuring a maximum of patient safety.

In January 2019 MELAG awarded the Moscow dental clinic Neodent for excellence in instrument reprocessing and patient protection. Oles Vyacheslavovich Shevchenko, director of the Dental Association of Russia, director and co-owner of Neodent, unites a talented team - bringing together individual expertise and innovative technologies for more than 20 years. Neodent's instrument decontamination room is equipped with the integrated MELAG system solution.

The Neodent clinic has an individual approach to each patient. Chief physician Babin Ivan Aleksandrovich has been conducting a comprehensive treatment of dental diseases for 20 years. Under his leadership, specialists work in close cooperation and implement the most complex tasks to restore the health of a smile - assisted by a team, which is responsible for the instrument reprocessing, providing reliably sterile instruments for each treatment.

The use of the MELAG system ensures safe instrument decontamination workflows following highest international hygiene standards: MELAtherm 10 for the automatic cleaning and disinfection of dental instruments. Automated cleaning and disinfection provides a considerably better infection protection because of the standardization of the process and because the risk for the staff to get injured is minimized. Standardization helps to avoid mistakes and enhances the instrument decontamination process to a maximum of effectivity quality and safety. The instruments are sealed with MELAseal 200 in transparent packages. For the secure sterilization of dental instruments a Premium MELAG Vacuklav steam sterilizer and the compact MELAquick 12 + for handpieces and turbines save valuable time with fast cycle times.

The Neodent clinic executes an ideal instrument decontamination workflow for the best patient protection following international standards.

We recently awarded Southpaws, a premier Specialty Surgery for Animals in Australia, located near Melbourne. Southpaws is one of Australia’s best veterinary referral hospitals with highest level care and the best hygiene standards in a professional and comforting environment for pets and owners. The clinic's excellence in instrument reprocessing ensures impeccable infection prevention for their clients and team.

The Speciality Surgery Clinic is headed by Dr. Charles Kuntz and Dr James Simcock, both surgeons are Registered Specialists of Small Animal Surgery. Their caring staff provide the very best in surgical, medical and cancer care for dogs and cats. The Southpaws team do everything to achieve great outcomes for pets and their owners. Not only in the field of human medical care a proper instrument decontamination workflow is essential for a reliable infection control. Avoiding infections with pathogenic organisms is a top priority in veterinary clinics, too.

Using the MELAG system at Southpaws ensures safe instrument reprocessing workflows following the highest international hygiene standards: MELAtherm 10 in combination with the water treatment unit MELAdem 53 for reliable automatic cleaning and disinfection of instruments, the large steam sterilizer Cliniclave 45 for efficient and safe sterilization of big amounts of surgical instruments and long instruments.

The Speciality Surgery Clinic for Animals provides high expertise in hygiene and infection control. We are happy to see the MELAG system solution used perfectly well at Southpaws.

MELAG Cliniclave 45 in the Sanssouci Clinic in Potsdam: sterilizing more instruments faster and safer.

Our surgical clinic in Potsdam
Bespoke medical care in a clinic designed to meet patient needs: set in the stylish yet reserved historical centre of Potsdam, the surgical clinic Sanssouci provides high-quality surgery in a caring and comfortable atmosphere. We perform some 2000 operations every year, primarily in the areas orthopaedics, general surgery, neurosurgery and ENT. Our state-of-the-art facilities ensure that we can provide the best-possible quality care.

Top-quality technology in our sterilization room
Our sterilization department also maintains the highest of quality standards. Fully-trained assistants working with cutting-edge technology ensure a constant supply of surgical instruments for all our operations. We rely on the high-performance MELAG Cliniclave 45 series to sterilize a huge amount of instruments faster. Of the many practical functions integrated in this steam sterilizers, our staff especially appreciate the short program run times, automatic shutdown function and ergonomic operation which the device provides. Purchased after refurbishing our decontamination room, our new large steam sterilizers ensures time-efficient working routines with reliable sterilization results.

Optimum patient safety
When it comes to patient safety, we are satisfied with nothing less than the best. Our new purchase makes it easy to comply with all legal requirements and internal directives. A range of integrated additional functions, such as batch approval via the display, facilitate the complete documentation of the instrument decontamination process including instrument traceability up to each individual patient.

Dr. Endo's dental clinic Natural Dental Office Hashimoto has been awarded as a MELAG Hygiene Partner for excellence in instrument reprocessing and patient protection. The dental clinic relies on the integrated MELAG system solution which produces a safe and efficient process flow for the maximum of patient safety.

At the Natural Dental Office Hashimoto per day some 150 patients are treated safely with a team of 5 dentists and about 20 staff members. After establishing top-level hygiene standards in his first dental clinic, with the concept and development of his new clinic, Dr. Endo wanted to proceed a next step ahead moving beyond excellence in infection control. He travelled to Germany, visiting MELAG and dental practices in Berlin, inspecting decontamination rooms to design a reliable instrument reprocessing workflow for the decontamination room in his own clinic. Inspired by innovation and reliabilty of the system solution he headed back to Japan to build up a state of the art hygiene cycle.

The instrument decontamination room of the Natural Dental Office Hashimoto is equipped with MELAtherm 10 for automatic cleaning and disinfection, the sealing device MELAseal 100+ for packaging, MELAquick 12+ and Vacuklav 31 B+ for the sterilization of dental instruments. Standardization helps to avoid mistakes and enhances the entire instrument decontamination process. Instead of cleaning and disinfecting the instruments manually Dr. Endo decided to use the automatic cleaning and disinfection which ensures a considerably better protection for the patients and his team. After a visual inspection, the instruments are sealed with MELAseal 100+ before sterilizing with Vacuklav 31 B+. For the sterilization of handpieces and turbines the Natural Dental Office Hashimoto relies on the the compact and fast steam sterilizer MELAquick 12 +. Using the MELAG system provides safe and efficient instrument reprocessing following the highest international hygiene standards.

Professor’s Dentistry is a dental clinic in Poltava, Ukraine owned by Professor Peter Skrypnikov, providing the entire range of stomatology for the whole family: dental surgery and general dentistry with a special focus in orthodontics, children’s dentistry and medication sleep dental treatment.  

We are the first only dentistry clinic in Ukraine where the entire integrated MELAG system solution has been presented. Safe and innovative patient treatment is our priority. We rely on a system provider with a long-standing expertise because patient safety starts with sterile instruments and first-rate hygiene standards.

The integrated MELAG system solution in our clinic:
A reliable instrument decontamination process requires efficient workflows – for this reason we prefer to work with products from one single company. It is good to know that we just need one contact person if we might have requests. Our devices, the washer-disinfector MELAtherm 10, MELAseal 200 for packaging, the Evolution series Vacuklav 41 B+, Vacuklav 44 B+ and MELAquick 12+ for sterilization are perfectly coordinated. MELAG steam sterilizers are long-standing top-quality products meeting our high performance requirements. We decided to use the washer-disinfector MELAtherm 10 for automatic cleaning and disinfection of our instruments. MELAtherm 10 provides the best possible protection against infection for patients and staff members. We are highly pleased with the short cycle times of the MELAG washer-disinfector while the cleaning and drying results of MELAtherm 10 are convincing.

Our entire reprocessing workflow is carefully documented with the MELAG software MELAtrace. We also use this software for load management and batch approval. Each MELAG device is attached to MELAtrace and the protocol of the device cycle is integrated in one proof pdf document for the batch approval. With highest level technology we follow the highest European hygiene standards for the best patient protection. MELAG products help us to save valuable time with efficient reprocessing workflows and we love to spend more time caring for our patients.

In August 2018 MELAG awarded the main dental centre of Drs Wong & Partners for excellence in instrument reprocessing and patient protection. The instrument decontamination room of the dental centre is equipped with the integrated MELAG system solution.

With over 50 clinics Drs Wong & Partners is the biggest dental clinic chain in Malaysia. The dental centre in Kuala Lumpur is the main clinic of the clinic chain and serves as a positive role model for all the other Drs Wong & Partners clinics with its high end technology equipment and forward-looking hygiene processes to put patient safety first. Every day from 100 to 120 patients are carefully treated regarding the full range of dental medicine. The dental centre's speciality is to provide general dental treatment on the highest level heading to be stated as a leader in the dental field in Malaysia.

The use of the MELAG system ensures safe instrument reprocessing workflows following highest international hygiene standards. Drs Wong & Partners established a hygiene cycle without gap in their dental centre. For the autromatic cleaning and disinfection of dental instruments they use the washer disinfector MELAtherm 10. Instead of cleaning and disinfecting the instruments manually they decided to implement automatic cleaning and disinfection which provides a considerably better protection of infection because the team is not at risk to get injured as before. After a visual inspection, the instruments are sealed with MELAseal 100+ and get prepared for sterilization in the steam sterilizer Vacuklav 40 B+ Evolution. The compact steam sterilizer MELAquick 12 + helps saving time with fast and safe sterilization of handpieces and turbines. For load management, the documentation of the entire process and batch approval Drs Wong & Partner use the software MELAtrace. Standardization helps to avoid mistakes and enhances the instrument decontamination process to a maximum of effectivity quality and safety.

Trident Dental Clinic was founded in 2004 and since then until today, the desire for self-improvement and achieving excellence motivates us to be the best from all points of view: staff, equipment, materials, dental works and professional image. At the Trident Dental Clinic we bring together a team of 18 dentists with specialized education and extensive experience. We want those who visit us to feel completely secure and to return to us whenever they need our expertise.

To our patients we offer an individual approach to meet their requirements and conditions. Also the instrument decontamination process has to be individual. For us it is not enough to be sure that we have a good infection control – it has to be an outstanding one.
That is why we rely on the integrated MELAG system solution: the washer disinfector MELAtherm 10 for safe cleaning and disinfection, the sealing device MELAseal Pro for packaging, Vacuklav 44 B+ for safe sterilization of our instruments and the software MELAtrace for documentation, load management and approval. Together with MELAG we enhanced the software so that it could interact perfectly with our practice software.

All the time we want to be a step forward in whatever we are doing. The systems we use are reliable and in accordance with the internal regulations in our practice. We perform cross checks in order to confirm the proper infection control chain and exclude any risk herewith for our patients.

We strongly recommend to implement impeccable hygiene standards as early as possible in Romanian dental clinics to protect patients and clinic staff from infections and diseases, even though there is no national regulation yet. We can refer to our good experiences with MELAG appliances for any other sterilization room. It can be seen as ideal and secure workflow following the European guidelines.

Practice launch with the MELAG system solution
Seeking to provide patients with the highest of hygiene standards, the new surgery in Mainz decided that only the best modern technology would do. Opening our OMFS group practice in early 2018 in Mainz, we wanted to open a practice which specialized in surgery so as to provide our patients with an expert service in attractive surroundings. Seeking to maintain the highest quality and aesthetic standards, we chose to equip our decontamination room with MELAG technology.

The Cliniclave 45 large steam sterilizer, the Vacuklav 44 B+ Evolution and 2x MELAtherm for constant availability of sterile surgical instruments
In addition to the Vacuklav 44 B+ Evolution with its range of useful innovations, we also use a Cliniclave 45. We made a decision to purchase the MELAG large steam sterilizer as we were already highly satisfied with the MELAG instruments we already had and the high quality of their results. The generous chamber volume of the Cliniclave paired with its very high working speeds meant that we were able to sterilize even more instruments even more quickly. Fitted with the same functions as the Evolution Vacuklav, the Cliniclave also has a number of additional functions such as automatic deactivation, a feature which we find very useful. In choosing a washer-disinfector, we decided to purchase two MELAtherm 10 devices and not a single large device. This means that we not only have a backup, but the quick working times of the MELAtherm means a constant supply of clean instruments. The cleaning and drying outcome of the MELAtherm is entirely satisfying. We package cleaned instruments with the MELAseal 200 sealing device. The easy-to-use nature of this device has made it a popular choice with our staff. The packaging process is not only safe, but much faster. The clear user interface of our MELAG products make for easy operation.

Complete instrument decontamination with products from just a single manufacturer
Using the MELAG system provides a number of advantages. Excellently-aligned processes ensure a fluid transition between the various work steps; our instrument decontamination staff find this very easy to implement. All the MELAG products permit safe and ergonomic working conditions, providing even better protection against infection for both patients and our team alike. New members of staff learn to use the MELAG system quickly and easily. Optimal processes ensure excellent workflows both within our practice and in relations with referring doctors. All this makes for a good working atmosphere and the best patient care. In MELAG, we have found a strong and reliable partner to help implement the highest hygiene standards, providing the best protection for patients and staff alike.

Our clinic is located in the heart of Kota Kinabalu, the capital city of Sabah on Borneo Island. We provide dental surgery and general dentistry with special interest in Orthodontics. The main priority of our clinic is safe and innovative patient treatment. For us, safety starts with impeccable hygiene standards and sterile instruments. This can only be ensured by the implementation of new technology and modern equipment following international standards and regulations.

Rising hygiene demands worldwide
In the age of globalisation the spread of diseases is a serious concern. Clinics need to undertake comprehensive measures that prevent harmful microorganisms from spreading and infecting patients. Simultaneously clinics have to be as transparent as possible. The patients in the Asia Pacific region increasingly want to know which hygiene precautions are being taken and how they are executed. To know that our devices for instrument decontamination monitor all processes and that each batch of instruments is carefully documented makes us and our patients feel safe. A reliable instrument decontamination process requires efficient workflows. We prefer to rely on a system provider with a long-standing expertise.

Reliable sterilisation with a Class-B steam sterilizer as part of the MELAG system solution
All of our MELAG devices and accessories are highly reliable and fully compatible to one another ensuring safe and efficient instrument decontamination workflows. Directly after patient treatments our used instruments will be thoroughly rinsed, cleaned and disinfected. All instruments will be inspected to make sure that there are no remaining stains or solid residuals before sterilizing the instruments with Vacuklav 41 B+. Hand-pieces will be oiled and lubricated. And packed in pouches, all instruments will be sealed by using the sealing device MELAseal 100. The steam sterilizer with its extremely fast cycle times is the centrepiece of our daily hygiene cycle. Even hollow instruments, such as hand-pieces or turbines are reliably sterilized in a very short time. With the “Quick S Program” our instruments are ready for re-use within 15 minutes, completely dry. To fully complete the instrument re-processing, an exact documentation is inevitable. Integrated in Vacuklav 41 B+ the software for approval, labelling and traceability of sterilized instruments means a big step forward for our entire instrument decontamination cycle.

Conclusions
MELAG products help us to save costly energy and valuable time which results in an accelerated instrument decontamination process. This puts us in the excellent position to spend more time caring for our patients. Relying on a Class-B steam sterilizer with pre-vacuum makes us confident that a safe sterilisation of instruments is provided to protect our patients and staff members.

Efficient and safe standard-compliant instrument sterilization with the MELAG double-door large steam sterilizers of the Cliniclave series.

The installation of the Cliniclave 45 D in the Centrum Zdrowia Tuchów
Our central sterilized equipment supply department in Tuchów municipal hospital purchased the MELAG Cliniclave 45 D large steam sterilizer within the scope of a refurbishment programme. Polish health regulations (the General Recommendations 2017) require that hospitals ensure the strict separation of clean and unclean areas. Seeking to comply with this requirement, we decided to purchase a double-door steam sterilizer from the Cliniclave series. The wall mounting of the device was quick and easy; the loading side is accessible only from the unclean room, whilst the removal side is located in the clean room. The time between delivery and commissioning of the device amounted to between only three and four hours; the installation without connection to the supply lines required only one hour. Loading and unloading is performed highly ergonomically with a loading trolley, loading hook and batch slider. The large touch display on both sides of the Cliniclave and its intuitive user interface makes for highly safe and very easy operating.

Complete instrument sterilization with the MELAG large steam sterilizer

The convincing device concept of the Cliniclave 45 series with its fast operating times and intelligent solutions - integrated functions such as energy-saving mode, batch approval via the display, and automatic complete shutdown - enables us to process all the instruments required in the hospital whilst ensuring availability of all the required instruments with only a single large steam sterilizer. The MELAG large steam sterilizer provides first-class value for money: reliable sterilization and excellent drying results at speed. This saves time and money every day. The attractive design of the Cliniclave also streamlines perfectly with our modern hospital room design.

Complying with the requirements of all legally-binding standards and directives, the Cliniclave 45 D enables us to cover all the sterilization needs of our hospital in an entirely safe manner. The health and safety of our patients is our number one priority: the Cliniclave was the best choice to meet our exacting requirements.

We have treated patients here in the Göttingen Ostviertel for over 20 years specializing in aesthetic dentistry. We also practice preventative medicine, paediatric dentistry, conservation, prosthetics, implantology and periodontics. We put innovative equipment and state-of-the-art technology to its best use, so as to ensure a focus on patient well-being.

MELAtherm and MELAtrace as constituent parts of the MELAG system solution
Our first aim while redesigning our decontamination room was to ensure the safest-possible instrument decontamination process so as to maximize patient safeguarding. This explains our choice of the MELAtherm 10: it ensures better and safer instrument decontamination following manual treatment, thereby improving our hygiene workflow. The cleaning outcomes are excellent and the integrated drying is a great success. The practical automatic metering function of the device means that we always use the right amount of liquids. The MELAG washer-disinfector saves considerable time and effort for our specialist staff who work day- in day-out to ensure the constant availability of sterile instruments. The MELAtherm effects a significant reduction in the danger of injury, as the individual instruments are no longer cleaned and disinfected manually. This provides our team with much better protection against infection.

The MELAtrace documentation system ensures secure instrument traceability right up to each patient, ensuring legal security. Overall, the use of this software means a considerable step forwards, as it ensures complete documentation, thereby enabling us to plan the loading and the devices and issue instrument approval. The optimal processes provided by MELAtrace are reflected in our practice routine. The attractive and clearly-arranged user interface of the device means intuitive and easy control of the complete decontamination process using the touch display.

The intelligent integration of the MELAG system solution incorporating the Vacuklav 40-B, MELAtherm 10, MELAtrace, MELAseal 100+ and MELAprint 60 brings considerable time savings and improves safety. This produces a highly efficient decontamination process with minimal input and short instrument availability time. We now have more time to concentrate on our patients.