Urgent dental care on a national level during the COVID‐19 epidemic

Abstract

Objective This paper aims to report and discuss the organization and statistics of dental care during the COVID‐19 epidemics on the national level in Slovenia, providing helpful information to health policy planners worldwide. Material and methods During an eight‐week lockdown, Emergency Dental Centers (EDCs) were established and coordinated on the national level to treat patients' urgent dental conditions. Telemedicine was used on the first level of triage to reduce contacts between healthcare workers and patients. Weekly coordination between EDCs was supported by real‐time data acquisition on the number of patient visits, prescribed medicine, the number and type of dental procedures, and the usage of personal protective equipment (PPE). Results In EDCs, 27,468 patients were serviced, on average 235 patients per day/million people. The care was provided by 4798 man days of dental health care workers. Except for the first week, treatment and triage visits showed a slight increase. The number of incisions was nearly constant, while the number of extractions increased. A nearly threefold increase was found for emergency endodontic treatments (EET). The number of antibiotic prescriptions demonstrated an increasing trend. Analgesic prescriptions showed a decreasing trend from the beginning of lockdown. Conclusions The reorganization and centralization of dental care proved to be an efficient model in Slovenia for the provision of urgent dental care, and the management of the healthcare workforce and PPE. Data from this study may provide helpful information for planning the needs and corresponding resources for the next waves of epidemics of COVID‐19.

The Impact of the First Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Providing Special Care Dentistry: A Survey for Dentists

“…It is possible that the number of persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities referred to reference centers and hospital dental departments increased with the inrush of the pandemic, especially when dealing with suspected COVID-19 in-fection. In addition, a number of countries centralized their dental services to address the general population (e.g., emergency dental centers) during lockdown [31]. Considering that 70.4% of the respondents conducted all or part of their professional activity in the public sector, it is likely that they were the recipients of most of the infected patients.…”

Dental Patients’ Perspective on COVID-19: A Systematic Review

“…The management of the emergencies and urgencies in public and private dental clinics during the various national lockdown, the handling of COVID-19 patients in need of urgent dental treatments, the optimization of the personal protective equipment (PPE), and the appropriate approach to resume the regular dental activity with a high level of safety for dental staff and patients have been deeply analyzed [6][7][8][9][10].…”

Utilização das terminologias urgência e emergência em odontologia no contexto da pandemia da COVID-19: Uma revisão de escopo

“…Como resultado da busca e leitura dos artigos na íntegra, foram encontrados estudos que traziam somente um dos termos para referenciar todas as situações de urgência ou de emergência odontológica. Alguns desses estudos fizeram uso apenas do termo "emergência odontológica" 32,33,27,15,35,36,18,19,61,37,21,42,43,44,55,57,47,24,31,56,50,59 , enquanto outros, em menor número, traziam o termo "urgência odontológica" na referência de toda e qualquer situação 54,48,52…”