Urgent dental care for patients during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

admission for the management of acute dental infections that threaten the airway and require intensive care.Patients with substantial swellings can progress to life-threatening emergencies, which can increase risks in the setting of reduced health-care availability. For such patients, extractions of the causative pathogenic teeth should be prioritised over resto rative rescue, and input from dedicated oral surgery and oral and maxillofacial services and close follow-up should be instigated as locally appropriate. This approach has many benefits, including stewardship of antimicrobials, but is a deviation away from routine dentistry that should be thoroughly discussed with patients. Decisions on undertaking treatment should therefore be made with appropriate patient consent. Clinicians might wish to follow up patients digitally (eg, through video calls), if appropriate, to ensure patient safety, but also to minimise repeated patient contact.Testing for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in dental professionals should be undertaken with the same high priority as that of medical healthcare workers in hospitals. The risk of a dental practitioner being positive for COVID-19 and potentially infecting patients attending emergency dental services should not be underestimated. Proactive and preventive measures need to be established as mainstay pro tocol to contain the spread of the virus.We declare no competing interests.

Can Teledentistry Improve the Monitoring of Patients during the Covid-19 Dissemination? A Descriptive Pilot Study

“…In case of urgent not-deferable surgical procedures, all subjects received a surgical treatment as atraumatic as possible [14]. All therapies were carried out under antibiotic therapy according to the pathological condition and after disinfection of the oral cavity with chlorhexidine 0.20%.…”

Saliva—Friend and Foe in the COVID-19 Outbreak

“…The potential for transmission via salivary bioaerosols poses a particularly significant danger to healthcare workers that operate in close proximity to the face and oral cavities, such as dental practitioners; oral-maxillofacial surgeons; ear, nose, and throat (ENT; otorhinolaryngology) surgeons; and ophthalmologists, especially when carrying out procedures that generate aerosols [41,42]. Indeed, the COVID-19 outbreak has resulted in the significant curtailment of services provided by these health professionals, posing a significant public health problem, as important and highly prevalent oral and ENT conditions cannot be adequately treated during this epidemic [41][42][43][44]. Thus, understanding the role of salivary aerosols in COVID-19 transmission is imperative, as is an appreciation of the effect of various environmental and therapeutic interventions on the extent of aerosol creation, and the development of strategies to minimise the risk to both health professionals and patients alike.…”

Role of respirators in controlling the spread of novel coronavirus (COVID‐19) amongst dental healthcare providers: a review

“…However, healthcare professionals will not be staying home. Indeed, they belong to a group of individuals who will be particularly vulnerable to contracting the infection (Dave et al 2020), which has been reported to be as high as 29% in Wuhan, China (Wang et al 2020). In this context, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) within the Department of Labor, USA, has developed an occupational risk pyramid which defines the risk of healthcare providers based on exposure (https:// www.osha.gov/Publications/OSHA3990.pdf; United States, Department of Labour).…”