The New Normal of Dentistry: Review of Recommendations for the Resumption of Dental Care during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Objective: This paper aims to identify the recommendations for the resumption of elective dental care after the epidemic outbreak of COVID-19 and to identify consensus and disagreements among the suggestions found in the documents. Materials and Methods: a comparative documentary research was carried out on the recommendations for the resumption of elective dental care after the outbreak of COVID-19. Additionally, a literature review was carried out based on a search in the Brazilian Regional Portal of the Virtual Health Library (VHL), which incorporates Lilacs, SciELO and MEDLINE databases, using the search query: (“COVID-19” AND “dentistry”). Results: government documents from the Ministry of Health or corresponding bodies and professional associations from eleven different countries in the world were analyzed and six articles were found addressing the recommendations for the resumption of elective dental care. Conclusion: there is a consensus about the requirements for dental facilities, the recommendation of screening patients before scheduling and appointments and the procedures performed during dental care. There is no consensus on the use of preprocedural antiseptic mouth rinses, the systematic use of rapid tests before the appointment, the type of respiratory protection that should be used by the dental team and the minimum interval to be allowed before cleaning the patient room when aerosol-generating procedures are performed.