What is shocking?

Shocking is to dental waterlines what a professional dental cleaning is to oral health–it is essential to ensure major buildup is removed and waterlines remain healthy. This step whips your dental waterlines into shape by using a strong disinfectant (like diluted bleach or Liquid Ultra) to completely rid your lines of contaminants to give them a fresh start every quarter.

Simply put, shocking cleans the waterlines, while treatment maintains the clean environment created by shocking. Treatment products can only do so much, and biofilm is always working to multiply and grow. At some point, your treatment solution will become ineffective against the growth of bacteria in your waterlines. It’s at that point you need to come in with a stronger solution and remove the bacteria that have become a little too comfy in your waterlines. The shock solution runs through the lines, removing biofilm and allowing daily (or continuous) low-level antimicrobial products (like BluTab or BluTube ) to work as intended.

Shocking is a crucial step in maintaining your dental unit waterlines and using this consistently in your protocol can further help protect your practice and also your patients.

You can find more information on shocking and how to shock here.