Integridade de luvas e procedimentos após atendimento odontológico.

Abstract

The protective barriers, among them the latex gloves, they are used to prevent the infections, allowing the professionals involved in dental treatment carry out their activities without direct contact with the oral fluids of patients. Thus, this study aimed to evaluate the integrity of latex gloves after use by dental students of Federal University of Campina Grande. This study was cross-sectional type, observational and with intensive direct documentation technique in the laboratory. The gloves were distributed among 110 right-handed students, thus, 110 pairs were evaluated, totaling 220 latex gloves, of two different brands, in several dental specialties (operative dentistry, periodontics, pediatric dentistry, endodontics and prosthodontics). The verification of the perforations was performed by insufflation in water diluted in fuchsin method. The results were analyzed using the chi-square test, being significant at the 5% level. Regarding the frequency of drilling, 30% of participants had perforations. Procedures performed in endodontics clinic caused the largest number of perforated gloves (27.2%). When asked about the perception of perforations in gloves, of those academics who had suffered disruption in the integrity of gloves, only 9.1% have realized the existence of holes/rips. There was no statistically significant difference between the presence of perforation and the brand of the glove (p = 0.29), neither between the presence of perforation and the gender (p = 0.49). It can be concluded that is indispensable a better attention to the integrity of the gloves during dental care, due to the high frequency of perforations in the analyzed gloves.