Coronavirus: WHO, postpone non-urgent dental visits

(ANSA) - ROME, AUGUST 13 - The World Health Organization recommends postponing non-urgent dental treatments, including checkups, dental cleaning and preventive or aesthetic treatments, to reduce the risk of contagion from the new coronavirus. Urgent treatments must instead be done. He writes it in a document published on August 3 but released yesterday.
   The National Association of Italian Dentists (Andi) does not share and criticize the WHO's recommendation stating that "the dental office is a safe place", also because the Italian dentists immediately received the document drawn up in May by the Scientific Technical Committee and validated by the Ministry of Health, with indications necessary for the prevention of biological risk from coronavirus in Phase 2.
    WHO explains that urgent treatments include those for acute oral infections, swelling, systemic infections, bleeding, severe pain that cannot be treated with drugs, traumas and interventions required before other urgent procedures.
   Providing urgent treatment can prevent patients from going to the emergency room. Therefore, if you have to go to the dentist's office, a screening must be done before the appointment remotely or by phone, otherwise upon arrival in the facility. If urgent treatment is required for a patient who has, or is suspected of having, Covid-19, it should be sent to specialized dental care services equipped with the appropriate measures to keep Covid-19 cases separate from others. "We realize that the WHO appeal concerns in particular those countries in which the precautionary and preventive measures in place in Italy since the beginning of the pandemic cannot be guaranteed - declares the president of Andi, Carlo Ghirlanda - But the Italian situation is clear ". (HANDLE).