Ways to Reduce COVID-19 Risks in Dental Offices

Researchers sought strategies to reduce the risk of airborne transmission of COVID-19 and found that adding hydrogen peroxide is indeed a well-rounded approach.

Adding a small amount of hydrogen peroxide to the water in ultrasonic scalers used to clean teeth can reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19 in dental clinics, according to a study from the University of Illinois Chicago.

Researchers evaluated the ways to safely reopen dental clinics closed at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and the findings are published in the Journal of Dental Research.

Coronavirus
Coronaviruses infect animals, humans, and birds. Human coronaviruses, such as SARS, MERS, and 2019-nCoV cause respiratory distress and even death. The S protein is the infectious agent of the virus.

‘Hydrogen peroxide not only aggressively fights the survival of the COVID-19 virus but also creates larger droplets which further reduce the probability of long residence times in the room air.’

Ultrasonic instruments and other dental tools contribute to aerosolized saliva, contaminated water, or blood, and raise the risk for spreading pathogens to surroundings.

Some dentists already knew that adding 1% hydrogen peroxide or 0.2% povidone offered the potential benefit of mild antiseptics, leading to the idea that adding the peroxide compound to dental instruments’ water supply could reduce COVID-19 virus spreading through dental procedures.

For this study, researchers tested how the spray produced by a common ultrasonic scaler device is changed by adding hydrogen peroxide to the device’s water supply.

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First, they measured the droplet sizes and velocities emitted by the tip of a free-standing ultrasonic dental scaler and then compared using pure water and different hydrogen peroxide concentrations in the tool’s water supply line.

The results showed that the addition of the oxidant hydrogen peroxide affects the droplet size and the ejection velocities in ways that offer data-driven guidelines for mitigating the risk of COVID-19 spreading.

Dental Check-Up
It is commonly recommended that you visit the dentist twice a year to clean your teeth and gums and also do the basic check–ups.

According to the researchers, adding the hydrogen peroxide to the ultrasonic scaler water stream should reduce infection risk because the number of small droplets from the patient’s mouth is reduced or eliminated.

Though researchers did not test droplets that contained the virus, they hypothesize that the probability of any virus in a patient’s mouth surviving is reduced by the hydrogen peroxide solution.

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In larger doses, hydrogen peroxide may be harmful, however, the 1.5% solution is safe and was being used by some dentists during the pandemic.

Further research would be necessary to find the actual pathogen load of the droplets (which depends on interactions of the ejected fluid with oral tissues and teeth), the corresponding liquid properties, and the role of the dental device’s movement around the mouth plays in droplet airborne COVID-19 dispersion.

Source-Medindia