Dilemmas and Opportunities in Dentistry in the Face of the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

On March 21, 2020, the "Janta Curfew" was enforced in India and extended in three parts, restricting all movement. Due to the lack of physical medical services available during that time, the suffering of people with various oral conditions increased. There was an essential lag in this face-toface treatment during the lockdown, and the dental treatment of children declined the most among all age groups. The altered stress-related sleep patterns in younger children led parents to use faulty methods to promote sleep more frequently, such as bottle-feeding children with fermentable liquids like milk rather than honey or sugar-laden pacifiers. These actions increased their vulnerability to developing early childhood caries (ECC). The COVID-19 pandemic provides a reason for dentistry to move from a surgical intervention-based approach to that emphasising prevention and associated with the decreased aerosol generation, such as selective carious tissue excavation, sealants, resin infiltration, Silver Diamine Fluoride (SDF) application, and Hall technique. The current scenario should also prompt the researchers to do additional research applying the pandemic "shock" to dentistry to systematically explore how treatment delays affect dental health and overall well-being.