Retrospective evaluation of the effectiveness of teledentistry approach during COVID-19 in pediatric dentistry: A parental perspective

OBJECTIVE: Dentistry necessarily requires close face-to-face contact with patients, so it was largely halted during the COVID-19 pandemic. During this pandemic, teledentistry (TD) could be a novel way to resume dental practice. It was aimed to investigate the satisfaction of the parents who received teledentistry (TD) service in a pediatric dentistry clinic during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as other factors that may have contributed to this satisfaction. METHODS: It was conducted using a telephone survey to interview the parents who used the TD system between June and December 2020. The survey includes participant demographics, COVID-19 anxiety, TD system, reasons for using TD, and Internet use in the field of health. Five-point Likert scale was used. A Chi-squared test was used and p < 0.05 was accepted as significant. RESULTS: Most of the participants stated that they had no trouble connecting to the TD system (82.5%), and 119 participants reported that the system helped them to solve their health problems. Significant relationships (p < 0.05) were found between overall satisfaction and parental job, level of education, anxiety level (3 questions), and use of the Internet in healthcare (4 questions), whereas no associations were found regarding the other variables (p > 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Parents benefited greatly from the TD system and would be open to using it after the pandemic. The education and parental job categories of parents, anxiety level, and use of the Internet in healthcare seem to have relationships with overall satisfaction.