Guidelines for Infection Control in Dental Health-Care Settings—2003
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Slide 9: Standard Precautions
Slide Text
- Apply to all patients
- Integrate and expand Universal Precautions to include organisms
spread by blood and also
- Body fluids, secretions, and excretions except sweat, whether or
not they contain blood
- Non-intact (broken) skin
- Mucous membranes
- Body fluids, secretions, and excretions except sweat, whether or
not they contain blood
Speaker Notes
Previous CDC recommendations on infection control for dentistry (1986, 1993) focused on the use of Universal Precautions to prevent transmission of bloodborne pathogens. Universal Precautions were based on the concept that all blood and certain body fluids should be treated as infectious because it is impossible to know who may be carrying a bloodborne virus. Thus, Universal Precautions should apply to all patients.
The relevance of Universal Precautions applied to other potentially infectious materials was recognized, and in 1996, CDC replaced Universal Precautions with Standard Precautions. Standard Precautions integrate and expand Universal Precautions to include organisms spread by:
- Blood.
- All body fluids, secretions, and excretions except sweat, regardless
of whether they contain blood.
- Non-intact skin.
- Mucous membranes.
Saliva has always been considered a potentially infectious material in dental infection control; thus, no operational difference exists in clinical dental practice between Universal Precautions and Standard Precautions.
Page last reviewed: September 22, 2009
Page last modified: April 26, 2005
Content source:
Division of Oral Health,
National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and
Health Promotion
