How Safe Is The Dental Practice Even During Pandemic

A realistic assessment to put it in perspective:

As health professionals we have been trained to assume everyone is infectious and contagious: This means we assume everyone is positive for aids, tuberculosis, hepatitis, ebola, corona, etc. Even smaller things like colds and regular flue.

This is why we use the same universal precautions for everyone regardless of race, gender, or health status.

-We reduce respiratory droplets and aerosols with proper suctioning and thorough disinfecting following OSHA guidelines and precautions.

What are were the guidelines before the pandemic?

Dental personnel use protective equipment and clothing to protect themselves and their clients: mask, gloves, provider glasses, scrubs, lab coat closed toed shoes, provider and client glasses.

and implement daily OSHA guidelines for cleaning, sterilization and disinfection

-hand washing, hand washing, hand washing and sanitizer all day long

-Spray everything touched by everyone and anyone, in the operator room, with commercial disinfectants.

-Wipe with commercial grade wipes, use barrier covers and disposable materials.

-reusable instruments are disinfected chemically and physically with extreme high pressure procedures called autoclaving (a high pressure oven that kills everything!) in sealed bags with disinfection indicator strips to ensure the equipment is working properly and disinfecting every single time.

due to COVID-19 we also follow additional CDC precautions to reduce risk: ask clients to remain home if they have travelled within the last 30 days or any symptoms of sickness, etc. Minimize the number of people in the dental rooms to only the one's getting treatment and giving treatment as much as possible. Use N-95 mask in high risk procedures, faces-shields, and head overs etc. Additionally:

--ask client's to remain in the car for check-in and bring them straight into their room to avoid social gathering in the waiting areas.

-provide hand sanitizer at the front desk and hand washing facilities for each dental room.

-disinfect chairs and door handles

-wear masks at all times when talking to clients and practice safe physical distancing when not providing treatment and appropriate distance at least arms length when giving treatment, avoiding leaning into the client's face as much as possible.

-use a pre-operative and post operative antiseptic mouth rinse.

The risk to the client is very minimal: touching door knobs as they enter, reduced by hand wipes, sanitizer, hand washing or both and following universal precautions in client treatment areas with added Pandemic recommendations.

-The risk to the staff is very minimal: sanitizing common areas, wearing protective gear, following OSHA guidelines, universal precautions and new pandemic social distancing guidelines.

A client or staff member is more likely to get sick, pick up many infectious diseases by grocery shopping, working at a store, or in contact with family members at home more than at a dental office.

Although many dental professionals knew that dental offices are safer than most places in your daily life and have always known that a healthy mouth means a healthier body: lower risk of respiratory diseases, complications and other infections, specially in immunocompromised clients! Most offices closed to preventative procedures, erroneously labeled "elective or non-essential". This was done

-Out of respect for government and state laws and recommendations.

-to reduce use of protective equipment (PPE)so that other healthcare/frontline medical workers have supplies available

-allowed the ADA and offices to evaluate and increase safety measures for staff and client's to meet the current and future changes in fighting the spread of infectious diseases and ensuring health for all, as an essential part of worldwide health.

Dental health is essential to better quality of life and health for client's. As Dental Professionals we took an oath to the same code of ethics as Doctors and nurses to provide treatment regardless of infectious diseases. As a dental professional I will uphold that code and continue to provide service, fully confident in my safety and my client's. We will see you soon at the dental office!