Excerpt
After the first report of SARS-CoV-2 virus infection in December 2019, the outbreak of acute respiratory syndrome, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) affected national and global health care system and economy. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 outbreak as a global pandemic on March 2020 [
1]. The respiratory droplets of COVID-19 patients can be a direct or indirect source of person-to-person transmission. In dental office, there are a lot of face-to-face communications for treatments and the possibility of aerosol formation that contain patients’ saliva, blood, and other oral fluids. The SARS-CoV-2 can be persisted on the surface of instruments of days and in aerosols for hours [
2]. Moreover, COVID-19-positive patients without signs or symptoms of COVID-19 also can transmit the disease, the exact scientific data on SARS-CoV-2 viral transmission during dental procedure [
3]. However, aerosols generated from dental procedures in COVID-19 patients also can contain SARS-CoV-2 virus and potentially transmit the virus to the practitioners and other patients [
4]. It is the standard recommendation to wear proper personal protective equipment (PPE) including a surgical mask, face shield, protective gown, cap, and gloves during dental procedure contacting or splashing the body fluid or blood [
5,
6]. Especially for the aerosol-generating procedures, respiratory protection with N95 or FFP2 respirator is recommended because it can filter the droplet and protect exhalation [
3,
5]. Therefore, WHO and most of the other countries recommended to delay non-urgent oral health care. Urgent or emergency care can be provided in patients with infection, swelling, bleeding, trauma, or severe pain that cannot be controlled with routine analgesics [
1,
3]. Therefore, maxillofacial surgeries such as orthognathic surgery, cleft, or reconstructive surgeries were not a primary target of treatment during the COVID-19 outbreak period. The COVID-19 pandemic completely changed the pattern of the treatment for elective surgery cases. During the severe outbreak period of COVID-19, from March to April 2020 in Korea, University hospitals in the author’s city were fully occupied with critical care for severe COVID-19 patients. Therefore, it was difficult to carry out maxillofacial surgery because of the insufficiency in assisting nurses at the operation room. In the future, COVID-19 would be controlled by a variety of efforts and development of vaccination. …
