Abstract
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has had a significant impact on dentistry in the UK due to the perceived risks associated with infection control. These concerns have led to a complete paralysis of routine dental care with provisions for emergency dental care only, which have been scarce. Considering the latter, this article presents a service evaluation of a hospital-based acute dental care service, which was rapidly adapted and enhanced to continue managing dental emergencies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis is based upon the dental diagnoses, management and geography of travel of over 1,500 attending patients in a five-week period during the rise and peak of COVID-19 in the UK. In addition, we assess our dental workforce's COVID-19 sickness reporting for those providing urgent dental care within this enhanced service. The article aims to provide additional and valuable frontline clinical information, experience and outcomes, including our categorisation of personal protective equipment used for varying face-to-face dental management during COVID-19.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank all the clinical and non-clinical staff within the dental directorate at GSTFT who were involved in the enhanced ADC system. The teamwork between all dental sub-specialities, management and administrative staff enabled a rapid and adaptive system to be implemented and allowed for provision of urgent and emergency dental services. Specifically, we would like to thank and acknowledge the help and assistance of Dr Mona Hajatdoost-Sani. The authors would like to acknowledge and thank Joanna Johnson and Eric Whaites (Joint Clinical Directors of the dental directorate, GSTFT) for their support in undertaking this project and in preparation of this manuscript. Further acknowledgement and thanks to the London region of NHS England and NHS Improvement for their input and assistance working with the dental directorate at GSTFT in developing urgent dental care provisions. We would also like to thank Dr Z. Bian (School and Hospital of Stomatology, Wuhan University) for kindly responding to our queries.
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S. Grossman and P. Sandhu are joint first authors.
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Grossman, S., Sandhu, P., Sproat, C. et al. Provision of dental services at a single institution in the UK's epicentre during the COVID-19 pandemic. Br Dent J 228, 964–970 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41415-020-1716-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41415-020-1716-2
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