Letters to the Editor

The authors have clearly explained the impact of COVID-19 to the practice of dentistry around the globe, and how to fulfil our obligation as a profession to ensure high standards of care to patients with urgent treatment needs in the current pandemic. This article basically focuses on robust facial protection in the practice of dentistry during the pandemic.¹ In the current COVID-19 setting, Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (OMS) units and their supportive healthcare staff are obliged to provide care for patients whilst taking measures to ensure their own safety. We would like to highlight a simple radiological phenomenon that caught our eye which had occurred as a result of such unorthodox measures by healthcare staff.

Sri Lanka has been under strict curfew for close to a month. OMS saw almost no maxillofacial fractures resulting from road traffic accidents during this time. Recently, in a village considered a COVID-19 hotspot, a man in a motorcycle breaking the curfew was chased by police. During the pursuit, the motorcyclist fell and sustained injuries including mandibular fractures. On examining his occipito-mental view (OM view) and postero-anterior mandible radiographs, the surgical team was intrigued by a linear radio-opaque artefact which ran across the radiograph. Further inquiry revealed that this artefact was due to the metal strip of the patient's facemask, which we named as ‘COVID-mask-line’. As the patient was from a COVID-19 hotspot area, the radiographer has taken the radiograph with the man's facemask on (Figure 1).