The first 6 weeks – setting up a UK urgent dental care centre during the COVID-19 pandemic

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed many challenges, including provision of urgent dental care. This paper presents a prospective service evaluation during establishment of urgent dental care in the North-East of England over a six-week period.

Aim

To monitor patient volumes, demographics and outcomes at the North-East urgent dental care service and confirm appropriate care pathways.

Main Outcome Methods

Data were collected on key characteristics of patients accessing urgent care from 23^rd March to 3rd May 2020. Analysis was with descriptive statistics.

Results

There were 1746 patient triages, (1595 telephone and 151 face-to-face) resulting in 1322 clinical consultations. The most common diagnoses were: symptomatic irreversible pulpitis or apical periodontitis. 65% of clinical consultations resulted in extractions, 0.5% an aerosol generating procedure. Patients travelled 25km on average to access care, however this reduced as more urgent care centres were established. The majority of patients were asymptomatic of COVID-19 and to our knowledge no staff acquired infection due to occupational exposure.

Conclusion

The urgent dental care centre effectively managed urgent and emergency dental care, with appropriate patient pathways established over the 6-week period. Dental preparedness for future pandemic crisis could be improved and informed by this data.

Three In Brief Points

• A summary is given of how urgent dental care was established in the North East of England during the COVID-19 pandemic which may help with future preparedness for pandemics.

• Aerosol generating procedures were almost always avoided in the delivery of urgent dental care

• A telephone triage system was effectively used to determine who needed clinical care, and to separate symptomatic, asymptomatic and shielding patients, with very few failures in triage noted.