Year: 2021
Type: article
Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic is an ongoing global health crisis responsible for millions of deaths worldwide. It was first reported in December 2019 in Wuhan, China as a highly infectious respiratory disease, which causes many cities and even countries to lock down their borders. COVID-19, also known as SARS-CoV-2, is a novel virus that spread via droplet or aerosol transmission. The infected individuals may either present himself as symptomatic or asymptomatic. The symptoms range from mild fever, dry cough, fatigue, anosmia, difficulty in breathing, and shortness of breath to severe systemic inflammatory responses. The transmission is not yet to be confirmed, however the Ministry of Public Health Thailand advice to take both aerosol and droplet precaution. As a dentist, myself, raises a concern over safety of both the patients and healthcare personnel in which each of the dental procedure involve in the direct contact with oral cavity containing saliva, blood, fluid and can be spread virus in airborne. According to the statistics, dentists held the highest risk of transmission among any other health care provider. There are many methods believed to reduce the transmission during the procedure but none of them are standardized. Researcher interested to compare the method to lower the risk by minimizing the airborne transmission via inventing the acrylic box, plastic-cover suction and negative pressure room for dental procedures. Six parameters were measured as follow: droplet, aerosol, temperature, humidity, pressure and air-change in the dental room. This experiment has shown that by using the acrylic box alone can decrease the droplet diffusion, Plastic-cover suction alone can decrease aerosol diffusion and using the negative pressure alone can exchange the whole air in the dental room. Finally, the researcher has found that by using the acrylic box, Plastic-cover suction and negative pressure room together can increase the quality of diffusion control.
Source: Royal Thai Army Medical Journal
Author: Jukisalapong, Arnun
Language: Thai
Topic: Dental Research and COVID-19
Subfield: General Dentistry
Field: Dentistry
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7217264166