Laser safety in the dental practice: five checks before every session

Laser safety in the dental practice: five checks before every session

Dental lasers are no longer unusual equipment. Diode and erbium devices are used every day in general practices for soft-tissue surgery, periodontal treatment and minor oral surgery. What has not always kept pace is the routine around them.

In most practices the dentist operates the device. The assistant, however, is the person who sets the room, prepares the patient and stays in the room for the whole session. That makes laser safety an assistant’s subject as much as a dentist’s.

Here are the five checks we teach in our own clinic — in the order we do them.

1. The door sign

Every laser session should begin with a warning sign on the door, and that sign stays up until the device is fully switched off. It is not a formality. It tells colleagues, cleaners and patients that a Class 4 beam is active in that room.

If your practice runs several rooms, decide in advance who is responsible for removing the sign — and make it the same person who switches the device off.

2. Suction, running before the first shot

Surgical smoke is produced the moment tissue is ablated. Suction must be running before the first pulse, positioned at the source, not across the room. A window is not a ventilation system, and a surgical mask is not a plume filter.

3. The fibre and the handpiece

Check the fibre before the session, not during it. A damaged fibre changes the energy delivered and, in the worst case, the direction of the beam. The check takes seconds: inspect, mount, test in a safe target.

4. The patient’s eyes — and everyone else’s

Patients need protective eyewear matched to the wavelength in use. So does everyone in the room, including you. Eyewear must carry the correct EN 207 marking for that wavelength; glasses marked for another laser offer no protection at all.

This is the single most common gap we see: a drawer full of protective glasses, none of them marked for the device in use that day.

5. The correct filter on every face

If a colleague walks in without eye protection during an active session, the session stops — or they leave. It is that simple, and it needs to be said out loud in the team before it happens.

After the session

Switch the device to standby, keep the sign up until it is fully off, and log the session. Near misses count. A reflection that hit the wall, a mask that slipped, a visitor who entered without glasses — these are the events that improve protocols, but only if they are written down.

What this means for assistants

You are not responsible for choosing the device or setting its parameters. You are responsible for the room. That is a real clinical role, and it deserves real training rather than a five-minute handover.

Want the full protocol? Our module Laser Safety for the Dental Team covers laser classes (IEC 60825-1), eyewear standards (EN 207), plume control and incident reporting — in 8 short lessons, with a certificate of completion.

→ Laser Safety for the Dental Team

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