The risk of blood exposure incidents in dental practices in the Netherlands.

Objectives: An awareness of the risk of blood-borne infections among dentists has been promoted by the Dutch Dental Association (NMT) as part of their quality and safety programme, and a nationally operating expert counselling centre was contracted to manage all reported incidents.

Methods: We analysed data on hepatitis B vaccination status, sex and age for all reported incidents recorded by this centre during 2008. We compared this with data collected at same time during a national survey to assess the performance of the centre.