Covid-19 Pandemic: What Changes for Dentists and Oral Medicine Experts? A Narrative Review and Novel Approaches to Infection Containment

Maria Eleonora Bizzoca, Giuseppina Campisi and Lorenzo Lo Muzio
Additional contact information
Maria Eleonora Bizzoca: Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Foggia, 71121 Foggia, Italy
Giuseppina Campisi: Department of Surgical, Oncological and Oral Sciences (Di.Chir.On.S.), University of Palermo, 90121 Palermo, Italy
Lorenzo Lo Muzio: Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Foggia, 71121 Foggia, Italy

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 11, 1-30

Abstract: The authors performed a narrative review on Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome- CoronaVirus-2 ( SARS-CoV-2) and all infectious agents with the primary endpoints to illustrate the most accepted models of safety protocols in dentistry and oral medicine, and to propose an easy view of the problem and a comparison (pre- vs post-COVID19) for the most common dental procedures. The outcome is forecast to help dentists to individuate for a given procedure the differences in terms of safety protocols to avoid infectious contagion (by SARS-CoV-2 and others dangerous agents). An investigation was performed on the online databases Pubmed and Scopus using a combination of free words and Medical Subject Headings (MESH) terms: “dentist” OR “oral health” AND “COVID-19” OR “SARS-CoV-2” OR “coronavirus-19”. After a brief excursus on all infectious agents transmittable at the dental chair, the authors described all the personal protective equipment (PPE) actually on the market and their indications, and on the basis of the literature, they compared (before and after COVID-19 onset) the correct safety procedures for each dental practice studied, underlining the danger of underestimating, in general, dental cross-infections. The authors have highlighted the importance of knowing exactly the risk of infections in the dental practice, and to modulate correctly the use of PPE, in order to invest adequate financial resources and to avoid exposing both the dental team and patients to preventable risks.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; personal protective equipment (PPE); dentistry; oral medicine (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/11/3793/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/11/3793/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:11:p:3793-:d:363508

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().