A curette is one of many different instruments you use at your dentistry while you are poking and prodding around in your patient's mouth, inspecting their oral health, or performing dental surgery. A curette needs a sharp edge to get the job done correctly, but the more you use your curettes, the duller or rougher its edge can become. For best results, your dentistry should partner with a local curette sharpening service. Here's how using such a service can benefit both your dentistry and the patients sitting in the dental chair for their next appointment.

Sharpening is So Much Less Expensive Than Replacing

Exact costs will, of course, vary depending on which brand of curette you purchase or which sharpening service you use. But in general, using a sharpening service that allows you to re-use the same curette will be much more cost-effective than throwing an old curette out altogether and ordering a brand new replacement. 

Even though the cost of just one curette might not seem like a big deal, do the math on how many you might go through via replacement in a given year or how many you might use if you intend to stay in business for decades. Switching to sharpening will simply save your dentistry some money, and you'll also be keeping old curettes out of the local landfill, so you score environmental points as well.

A Dull Curette Can Make the Patient Even More Uncomfortable

Not many people love getting dental work done, but they will be even more uneasy if they feel like you are not doing your job very efficiently or are somehow causing them additional pain during a procedure. A dull curette may have a rougher edge and might therefore feel a bit rougher to the patient while you are trying to scrape off all of that plaque. The patient is not likely to be using any type of pain suppression medication during a basic cleaning and may notice the problem a bit more if you seem like you have to keep scraping and scraping to get the job done.

Get the Patient In and Out of Your Office Quickly So You Can Bring Someone Else In

When you have a sharper curette to scrape plaque or finish other tasks more quickly, the patient can get the appointment done faster. Over the course of a full day, you might be able to get more patients in and out of your dentistry if you are not delayed by tools that are in poor condition. If you can fit even one more patient into your schedule per day, that's extra money for your business and your revenue will be up significantly over the course of the year. This is why you might want to keep your curettes sharpened regularly, even when they aren't yet completely dull or rough.

For more information on curette sharpening, contact a company like Dental Instrument Specialists.