Medical Curette Retipping: What You Need To Know

16 September 2021
 Categories: Health & Medical , Blog

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Whether you are a dentist who uses dental curettes to perform root scaling procedures or a medical practitioner who utilizes a variety of curettes when performing patient procedures, such as taking tissue samples, you likely know that these instruments become dull over time and often need frequent replacement. Since medical instruments can be pricey, the cost of frequent curette replacement can add up greatly over time. 

If you are tired of spending so much money on curette replacements, then read on to learn about more affordable curette retipping that can help your practice keep your dental or medical instrument replacement costs down. 

How Curette Retipping Is Performed 

Like most medical instruments, curettes are made up of handles and tips, which are also called instrument points. While the handle is an important part of an instrument, this component is unlikely to wear over time and typically stays in good condition much longer than the instrument points do. When you have your surgical curettes retipped, a retipping service removes the existing instrument point on the handle and replaces it with a brand-new one. 

Since the original tip of a medical instrument is typically attached to the handle with a special anaerobic sealing compound, most curette retipping services first heat the instrument to over 500 degrees F to break down this sealing compound, allowing for easy instrument tip removal. 

Then, the instrument handle is thoroughly cleaned and sanitized and a brand-new, super-sharp replacement tip is adhered to it with an anaerobic sealing compound or soldering. The curette retipping service then returns your medical instruments back to you so you can utilize them as you would brand-new curettes. 

The Benefits of Medical Instrument Retipping 

Medical instrument retipping offers dentists and physicians many benefits.

The most obvious benefit of curette retipping is the cost savings when compared to replacement of an entire medical instrument; the retipping process of a curette costs just a fraction of the price of a brand-new medical instrument.

When you choose to retip your medical instruments on a regular basis instead of simply discarding and replacing both the tips and handles, you also decrease the amount of waste your facility produces that ends up in local landfills, which can help the environment. 

In addition, some instrument retipping services will allow you to place an alternative tip on a medical instrument handle when you desire; for example, if you have a large number of 5 mm curettes that you find you do not use very often, you can have a retipping service swap the 5 mm curette tips for 1 mm tips that you use much more often. 

If you are a dentist or physician who would like to reduce your curette replacement costs, then consider having your curettes retipped by a curette retipping service on a regular basis instead of replacing your curette handles every time the tips become dull. Curette retipping is affordable and environmentally friendly.