COVID-19 New Dental Protocol and 5 Dentistry Problems Patient faced
COVID 19 dental protocols during a pandemic will ensure you visit the safest dentists.
It has been more than a year since the COVID 19 has entered our lives. We have become completely germophobes; highly focused on hygiene from wearing masks to washing our hands excessively, coronavirus has contrived us in different ways. Thousands of lives are no more and millions are infected. Though scientists had found a vaccine after several trials still arising of new variants and future results are still challenging for them. Until then we all have to adapt ourselves to this new scenario and stay safe.
But when your tooth starts getting hurt badly everything changes, and you just can’t stop yourself to go to the dentist.
We all know one of the most essential measures to Avoid COVID is to wear a mask and in a dentist’s clinic, there is no way to do that, right? One needs to sit there for hours with an open mouth where someone else who might have been infected has sat. This situation highly increases the possibility of catching COVID.
Relax, but not according to the new protocols.
The American Dental Association (ADA) and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued new guidelines for dental clinics. With a view of patients’ safety, these guidelines are published. During COVID, they have updated the dental protocols so that more patients can visit the safest COVID dentists.
Have a look at these updated guidelines when it comes to visiting the dentist.
What Are the Updated COVID 19 dental protocols?
When the pandemic started, it was advisable to the patients by ADA and CDC to visit the dentist in case of dental emergency only, such as intolerable pain or broken tooth. During the pandemic, they also worked out to assist patients to go to the safest COVID dentists every time. Such protocols helped hospitals too because for emergency responses to COVID patients more protective equipment can be saved.
It can be tricky to decide whether a dental condition is an emergency or not. Your non-emergency dental condition can turn crummy and lead to dangerous consequences. Although, ADA has mentioned that non-COVID cases have been detected by dental practices to date and dentists believe that by taking care of precautions, patients can avoid COVID and tend to their oral health.
During COVID, CDC has updated new guidelines and issued dental protocols, so that more clinics can reopen and take patients. Although dentists need to follow most of these guidelines before COVID, now they are augmented and patients find themselves more secure as they are visiting the safest COVID dentists.
Still, many people have safety concerns; we are going to talk about a few of them.
Concerns in COVID Dentistry
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Droplets and Aerosols
The main carriers of the coronavirus are aerosols and droplets, as they can float in the air and land on different surfaces. When infected people cough, sneeze or talk these droplets and aerosols leave their mouth, thus you can easily inhale these particles. That is why we need to wear masks.
When you’re visiting the dentist you can’t wear a mask. In the clinic, you’ll be sitting in a small space with your open mouth, and in this condition, a virus can enter your body. Especially, before you, if an infected patient was sitting on that chair.
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The Dental Health Care Personnel (DHCP)- can be a carrier
On a day dentist and his staff come in contact with many patients, it might possible some of them are infected. A drop of saliva or blood from a coronavirus patient is sufficient to get positive the dental health care personnel (DHCP) themselves.
Thus, in a moment of neglect when the DHCP will tend to your teeth and transfer the fatal virus to you and the chain will continue.
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Infection from Other Patients
We all know dental processes are unpredictable and even take longer than the expected duration. When such a thing happens, patients waiting in the room are increases and the clinic gets crowded. In this situation, it can be difficult to maintain the recommended distance of 3 feet and to avoid COVID social distancing is one of the important measures.
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Dental Equipment
In a dental clinic, many types of equipment are reusable and move from one patient’s mouth to the other. In Between the two patients, usage of this type of equipment is disinfected, but if they are not completely sterilized they can transmit the virus right into your mouth.
Because the DHCP has to follow so many precautions and by the end of the day, they will be exhausted, even a little carelessness while cleaning the equipment can be dangerous to the patients.
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The Environment
As mentioned earlier also that the respiratory particles settle on various surfaces in the dental clinic. For up to 72 hours these particles can be infectious. Though the possibility of transmitting COVID in this way is less as compared to the other methods, if you touch any of these contaminated surfaces and then touch your nose, mouth, or eyes, you can transfer coronavirus in your body.
But during COVID the updated dental protocols are here to particularly address these concerns.
Primarily you should take care of your oral health at home, but if you feel like you are in bad pain, gum disease, or in need of root canal therapy, teeth whitening, laser dentistry, cosmetic dentistry then you don’t have to worry anymore. Paragon Dental is the safest COVID dentist center to visit. We take care of your teeth while avoiding the coronavirus.