International Journal of Health Sciences & Research (www.ijhsr.org) 317 Vol.6; Issue: 5; May 2016 International Journal of Health Sciences and Research www.ijhsr.org ISSN: 2249-9571 Review Article Risk of Exposure and Preventive Strategies of HIV Infection in Dental Office - A Review Sangeet Sethi 1 , Kiran D N 2 , Gourav Popli 3 , Aayush Malhotra 4 , Avi Bansal 3 , Sumedha Mohan 5 1 Consultant Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeon, New Delhi. 2 Professor, Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Vishnu Dental College, Andhra Pradesh. 3 Senior Lecturer, Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Subharti Dental College, Meerut. 4 Senior Lecturer, Dept of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, M.M College of Dental Sciences and Research, Ambala. 5 Postgraduate Student, Department of Periodontology and Oral Implantology,Pathology, Babu Banarsi Das Dental College, Lucknow. Corresponding Author: Gourav Popli Received: 07/03/2016 Revised: 28/03/2016 Accepted: 25/04/2016 ABSTRACT Infection prevention and control is an important part of safe patient care. Concerns about the increasing prevalence of HIV require dental practitioners to establish, evaluate, continually update and monitor their infection prevention and control strategies and protocols in dental office. Dentists must maintain current knowledge of infection prevention and control procedures, and apply and maintain them appropriately and consistently. It is the dentist’s responsibility to ensure that staff are adequately trained in infection prevention and control procedures, and that the necessary supplies and equipment are available, fully operational, up-to-date and routinely monitored for efficacy. In addition to professional obligations, dentists also have an ethical duty to maintain a safe and healthy office environment for both patients and staff, and to adhere to all rules and regulations related to the operation of a dental practice, including workplace health and safety and environmental protection. Keywords: HIV, Risk, Exposure, Prevention. INTRODUCTION Exposure to blood borne pathogens poses a serious risk to health care workers. [1] Exposure is defined as an event that results in the contact of the patients open tissues to the blood of the health care professional. [2] The risks linked with exposure to blood and body fluids in hospitals became well known with the advent of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Any patient with bacteraemia, viraemia, parasitaemia, or fungemia may potentially transmit a pathogen to a health care worker. Several factors have been identified for infection to occur. The pathogen must have the capacity to replicate within a human host; the pathogen must be prevalent among patients, volume of blood or body fluid inoculated and viral load contained within it. The factors increasing the rate of seroconversion include: deep bloodletting injury, device visibly contaminated with blood, and needles used for intravascular procedure. [3] The risk from non-intravenous medical injections and lower than the risk from intravenous injections. [4] Transmission of more than 20 to 60 different pathogens by sharps injuries and exposure to blood and body fluids has been reported. [5,6] The three viruses - HIV, HBV and HCV account for majority of the cases