Personal Protective Equipment
Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) commonly used in general dental care are single-use-disposable gloves (sterile or non-sterile), protective eyewear, face-shields, masks, gowns and utility gloves used to protect personnel from blood and body fluids and chemical hazards. The main use of barriers is to control gross contamination and not prevent spread of every single microbe. As an example, some of the viruses are smaller than the microscopic pores in latex exam gloves and therefore have a probability of passing through the glove material.
In this instance, one may safely infer that gloves are meant for reducing the amount of exposure to the viral particles of the body fluids and not to totally prevent contact with the virus. Therefore, hand washing with an antimicrobial soap after removing gloves is necessary and pragmatic. With respect to dentistry, there has not been a single reported and accepted case of disease transmission linked to passage of viral particle through the pores in the gloves.
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