key: cord-0716263-22135wof
authors: Umansky Sommer, Marina; Davidovitch, Tzippy; Platner, Ori; Inerman, Asya; Yarom, Noam
title: The effect of COVID‐19 pandemic on oral medicine services in a tertiary referral center
date: 2020-05-28
journal: Oral Dis
DOI: 10.1111/odi.13417
sha: ac5e81c224639afd364bb92068d42c68d8876776
doc_id: 716263
cord_uid: 22135wof

nan

grade its capacity in accordance with data coming from China. The Oral Medicine Unit was instructed to adjust its activities according to the accumulating data and the Israeli Ministry of Health (MoH) regulations which were updated periodically. As of March 17, 2020, the MoH halted all elective dental treatments across the country (Israeli Ministry of Health, 2020).

According to Sheba Medical Center policy (effective since March 17), all clinical departments divided their staff into three working teams (capsules) in order to avoid cross-infection of an entire department. The teams did not have any overlap, and important patient updates were made via phone call or email. In addition, staff members that were not involved in providing urgent care (e.g., dental hygienists and orthodontists) and staff over 60 years of age had the opportunity to stay home or serve on different roles according to the medical center's current needs. As a result, our unit functioned with less than one-third of its personnel each working day present at the clinic to deal with emergencies. Soon after, we have introduced a telemedicine service using a designated secured system (Datos Health, Ramat Gan, Israel) with the first patient seen on March 23.

Our Oral Medicine Unit services include both oral medicine (mucosal diseases, salivary glands dysfunction, and orofacial pain) and dental care for medically compromised patients and patients with special needs at all ages (including dental treatment under sedation and general anesthesia). Therefore, the vast majority of our patients were considered to be at a high risk for COVID-19 severe morbidity and mortality.

The present paper aims to report the dynamics of our activities during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in Israel and to assess the benefit of telemedicine under the current circumstances. There was a gradual decline in patient's attendance during the last 2 weeks of February that can be explained by patients refrain-

Investigation; Visualization; Writing-original draft; Writing-review & editing. Tzippy Davidovitch: Conceptualization

Investigation; Visualization; Writing-original draft; Writing-review & editing. Ori Platner: Investigation; Writing-review & editing. Asya Inerman: Investigation; Writing-review & editing. Noam Yarom: Conceptualization; Data curation; Investigation; Visualization

Writing-original draft; Writing-review & editing

Interim Guidance for Minimizing Risk of COVID-19 Transmission

Guidelines for dental clinics for the management of the corona virus

Coronavirus Update 21-24/2/20 [Press release