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Impact of COVID-19 on Dental Care during a National Lockdown: A Retrospective Observational Study

The coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) has challenged dental health professions. This study analyzes its impact on urgent dental care in the Department of Conservative Dentistry and Periodontology, University Hospital Munich and Bavaria, Germany. Patient numbers without and with positive/suspected CO...

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Autores principales: Walter, Elias, von Bronk, Leonard, Hickel, Reinhard, Huth, Karin Christine
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8345748/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34360255
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18157963
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author Walter, Elias
von Bronk, Leonard
Hickel, Reinhard
Huth, Karin Christine
author_facet Walter, Elias
von Bronk, Leonard
Hickel, Reinhard
Huth, Karin Christine
author_sort Walter, Elias
collection PubMed
description The coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) has challenged dental health professions. This study analyzes its impact on urgent dental care in the Department of Conservative Dentistry and Periodontology, University Hospital Munich and Bavaria, Germany. Patient numbers without and with positive/suspected COVID-19 infection, their reasons for attendance, and treatments were retrospectively recorded (February–July 2020) and linked to local COVID-19 infection numbers, control measures, and numbers/reasons for closures of private dental practices in Bavaria, Germany. Patient numbers decreased within the urgent care unit and the private dental practices followed by a complete recovery by the end of July. While non-emergency visits dropped to almost zero during the first lockdown, pain-related treatments were administered invariably also in patients with positive/suspected COVID-19 infections. Reasons for practice closures were lack of personal protective equipment (PPE), lack of employees, staff’s increased health risks, and infected staff, which accounted for 0.72% (3.6% closures in total). Pain-driven urgent dental care remains a constant necessity even in times of high infection risk, and measures established at the beginning of the pandemic seem to have provided a safe environment for patients as well as oral health care providers. PPE storage is important to ensure patients’ treatment under high-risk conditions, and its storage and provision by regulatory units might guarantee a stable and safe oral health care system in the future.
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spelling pubmed-83457482021-08-07 Impact of COVID-19 on Dental Care during a National Lockdown: A Retrospective Observational Study Walter, Elias von Bronk, Leonard Hickel, Reinhard Huth, Karin Christine Int J Environ Res Public Health Article The coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) has challenged dental health professions. This study analyzes its impact on urgent dental care in the Department of Conservative Dentistry and Periodontology, University Hospital Munich and Bavaria, Germany. Patient numbers without and with positive/suspected COVID-19 infection, their reasons for attendance, and treatments were retrospectively recorded (February–July 2020) and linked to local COVID-19 infection numbers, control measures, and numbers/reasons for closures of private dental practices in Bavaria, Germany. Patient numbers decreased within the urgent care unit and the private dental practices followed by a complete recovery by the end of July. While non-emergency visits dropped to almost zero during the first lockdown, pain-related treatments were administered invariably also in patients with positive/suspected COVID-19 infections. Reasons for practice closures were lack of personal protective equipment (PPE), lack of employees, staff’s increased health risks, and infected staff, which accounted for 0.72% (3.6% closures in total). Pain-driven urgent dental care remains a constant necessity even in times of high infection risk, and measures established at the beginning of the pandemic seem to have provided a safe environment for patients as well as oral health care providers. PPE storage is important to ensure patients’ treatment under high-risk conditions, and its storage and provision by regulatory units might guarantee a stable and safe oral health care system in the future. MDPI 2021-07-28 /pmc/articles/PMC8345748/ /pubmed/34360255 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18157963 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Walter, Elias
von Bronk, Leonard
Hickel, Reinhard
Huth, Karin Christine
Impact of COVID-19 on Dental Care during a National Lockdown: A Retrospective Observational Study
title Impact of COVID-19 on Dental Care during a National Lockdown: A Retrospective Observational Study
title_full Impact of COVID-19 on Dental Care during a National Lockdown: A Retrospective Observational Study
title_fullStr Impact of COVID-19 on Dental Care during a National Lockdown: A Retrospective Observational Study
title_full_unstemmed Impact of COVID-19 on Dental Care during a National Lockdown: A Retrospective Observational Study
title_short Impact of COVID-19 on Dental Care during a National Lockdown: A Retrospective Observational Study
title_sort impact of covid-19 on dental care during a national lockdown: a retrospective observational study
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8345748/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34360255
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18157963
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