Dental Appointments Won't Be the Same in COVID Era

In the same way as in other medical occupations, dental services responded to COVID-19 lock-downs, stopped routine visits and only provided emergency care for those suffering severe necessities.

However, many dentists are now reopening, but with the introduction of new protocols to reduce infection.

Dentists say that your dental appointment is not the same, with changes from the waiting room to the dental chair.

First off, do not expect to spend much time waiting for old magazines in the waiting room.

Instead, many dentists ask patients to how to get braces on faster wait in their car until their chairs are ready for treatment. She said Dr. Kami Hoss, an orthodontist in San Diego. Patients either call or text to let the office know that they are outside and use a phone or a laptop to fill out the paperwork.

"We've virtualized the waiting room," he said. "Our waiting room is now in your car.

When inside, the patients are accepted at the screening table where assistantes inquire about the symptoms of COVID-19 and take the temperature, Dr. Kirk Norbo, co-chairperson of the American Dental Association'

"We are pretty comprehensive at this point in the entire screening process," said Norbo, a Purcellville dentist in Va.

According to Hoss, such screening should make a dental office one of the safest places for treatment in medicine.

"We want this virus to remain outside of our office," he said. "We reschedule and delay their appointment if a patient has any symptoms that might be a red flag."

Wear a mask throughout the office, you will only remove it if you settled in the dental chair.

You may find less people in the office as well. Practices try to arrange meetings in order to minimise the number of people at any time in the building, Norbo said.

The number of people to be appointed is also limited to patients. That may mean the parents leave their children with a baby sitter at home, or the parents of older children may be asked to wait outside while their children are being treated, said Hoss.