COVID-19 AND ITS IMPLICATION ON DENTISTRY

Abstract

The spread of COVID-19 has posed significant challenges for dentistry all around the globe and is causing a huge financial unsustainability for all healthcare workers. Due to the unique characteristics of dental practices, dental health care providers are at a higher risk of contracting COVID-19. The route of spread can be direct transmission such as cough, sneeze, aerosol producing procedures, inhalation of droplets and through direct contact trans-mission with symptomatic as well as asymptomatic patients. The potentially affected hospitals and dental practices require strict and efficient infection control protocols. With the evolving situation, due to COVID-19, routine dental cross infection control measures are not enough to safeguard dental care providers and seekers. Hence, these extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. Modification and enhancement of the existing protocols is required e.g. use of Personal Protective Equipment in all dental practices should be implemented in routine dentistry, adaptation in the sterilization and disinfection techniques is inevitable and it may have to be incorporated permanently in to our daily practices. In this current pandemic, the digital dentistry has emerged as a new trend and it needs to be a part of our curriculum in undergraduate as well as postgraduate courses and it also needs to become part of our routine practices even after this virus ends.