Few, if any of us, look forward to the comfort of the reclining dental chair. The mere thought of a dental surgeon poking around with sharp and abrasive instruments is enough to provoke pains, real or imagined in most.

Some scientific research, however, has it that pain and the euphoria of pleasure are, at times, overlapping.

While I am not about to prove this proposition correct, I must confess that certain dental and, theoretically painful procedures, may be experienced as mildly pleasurable. Take the sensation felt when a clamp is slid over a molar and then firmly pressed into the gum, when amalgam fillings have to be compacted.

Kinky? Perhaps, and, maybe, I am the only one experiencing such delights, who knows.

It goes without saying that dental instruments, like knives and forks, are too expensive to be used once only and then thrown away and they have to be scrubbed clean, washed and sterilized. This sterilization is considered effective to kill all the germs and viruses of the guy before you only when these instruments are subjected to pressurized and superheated steam in an autoclave pressure vessel, an expensive gadget.

Autoclaves, like everything else, come in all shapes and sizes. From the el-cheapo simply-switch-on-and-run models to sophisticated set-ups with graph recorders showing the highest temperature reached and the period during which this high temperature has been maintained. In my opinion the latter is the most foolproof method to ensure that you and I are unlikely to pick up the AIDS or any virus from a previous patient.

Sure, there are "indicator" bags, in which the scrubbed instruments can be packed; an indicator dot is supposed to change colour when the critical temperature of 150 degree C has been reached but there is no guarantee that the period required to fully sterilize has been maintained sufficiently long and that all bugs have, indeed, been exterminated.

Indicator bags are often reused and the busy nurse might not pay enough attention to the colour changes. Chances are, therefore, very real that AIDS and other viruses and pathogens are passed on via the dental chair.

It is therefore imperative that recording autoclaves should be made compulsory for every establishment that reuses invasive instruments, in tandem with the responsibility of checking every sheet of graph paper vested with the dental surgeon, NOT the nurse, who may, or may not, be educated or responsible enough to appreciate the very serious consequences of any omission. Remember: it is usually a combination of one or two minor omissions to render a calamity and the dental profession is no exception to this rule of fatality.

There are, in fact, plenty of recorded instances where the hepatitis B virus has been transmitted from patient to patient via dental instruments or by the dentists' hands when not wearing gloves. Or worse, where the surgeon tries to save a few cents by reusing gloves.

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