Post Covid-19 transition in dentists providing dental health care to children

Abstract

The aim of the study is to evaluate the post COVID-19 transition in dentist providing dental health care to children. Materials and Methods : A cross-sectional questionnaire based survey was conducted among the dentists to assess the transition post COVID-19 towards dental health care to children. The survey was carried out with a sample of 110 respondents. Results: The results shows that the COVID-19 outbreak had definitely made the dentists uncomfortable in treating the patients and majority (55.4%) of them agree that even children can be asymptomatic carriers. Moreover, 83.7% of the dentists agreed that the PPE kit will definitely increase the fear and anxiety among the children, 75.5% dentists agreed that this will also lead to increase in the cost of the treatment. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic majority of the dentists never used the N2O for managing the pediatric patients and even after such scenario they are not planning to use N2O for pediatric behavior management. Conclusion: Dental professionals must be fully aware of 2019-nCoV spreading modalities, how to identify patients with this infection, and, most importantly, self-protection considerations. The aerosols and splatter generated during dental procedures have the potential to spread infection to dental personnel and other people in the dental office. Dentists can play a significant role in disrupting the transmission chain, thereby reducing the incidence of disease by simply postponing all non-emergency dental care for all patients.