Sixteen years of experience with sterilization monitoring.

Sterilization in the dental office should be monitored to ascertain proper sterilizer function. Biologic monitoring with calibrated preparations of bacterial spores is the preferred, as well as the only method that actually measures sterilization. A dental school-based sterilization monitoring service for dental practices was established in 1978 at the University of Detroit. This service has grown from 20 participating dental offices to more than 1,500. In 1993, 18,137 biologic monitoring tests were performed. The participants in the service primarily use autoclaves (70%) for heat sterilization, while unsaturated chemical-vapor sterilizers (20%) and dry-heat units (10%) are less common. This article describes the history of sterilization monitoring in dental practices from 1978 to the present through a dental school-based service.