key: cord-0840772-sjg1xttv
authors: Ali, Shereen
title: Dental practice during the era of COVID‐19 pandemic: An Egyptian experience
date: 2021-05-24
journal: Oral Dis
DOI: 10.1111/odi.13898
sha: 4afc32a23a64aa46a1b1227ae1efc82ec49de299
doc_id: 840772
cord_uid: sjg1xttv

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The dental office is among the highest risk settings for disease transmission due to the nature of the dental practice, which generate a cloud of splatters (Ahmed et al., 2020; Al-Khalifa et al., 2020; Cagetti et al., 2020) .

We investigated the effect of COVID-19 pandemic on the dental practice of Egyptian dentists using an online questionnaire created via Google Forms. The link was circulated through social networking applications (WhatsApp and Facebook). The questionnaire and the study were approved by Ethics Committee of Faculty of Dentistry, Cairo University, Egypt. The first section of the questionnaire gath- About the safe procedures, many participants (71.7%) agreed on emergency procedures. Endodontic procedures were selected by 43.8% of the participants, followed by surgical procedures (36.7%), and then restorative and aesthetic procedures (33.2%), and 21.2% of the dentists stated that all dental procedures are safe.

Many dentists (78.3%) noticed a decrease in patients' flow on resuming dental practice. Almost all the dentists ask their patients to wear a face mask in the waiting area; regularly (82.3%) or irregularly (16.4%). Concerning social distancing in the waiting area, 53.1% of the dentists maintain this practice all the time, and 23.45% follow this practice every now and then.

Most of the participants routinely follow the universal precautions of infection control for every patient (87.6%) and changed their infection control routine after the pandemic (81.9%).

Close assessment reflected some deficits. Many dentists wash their hands with soap or use sanitizer before and after treatment of every patient (80.5%) or some patients (15.1%). Concerning the use of high-volume suction, 44.2% of the dentists use it with every patient and 28.8% of the dentists use it every now and then. Regarding the rubber dam, 29.6% of the dentists use it with every patient and 30.1% of the dentists use it irregularly. F I G U R E 1 Demographic data

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