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As the dental profession return to practice following the recent lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the correct use of personal protective equipment (PPE) will be essential to comply with Government guidelines and help prevent further spread of the coronavirus. At the time of writing, it is understood that a person may carry COVID-19 and be asymptomatic for a period of time, therefore proper protection for both the patient and the dental professional is critical if dental practices are to continue practising safely.
CPD/Clinical Relevance: A good understanding of PPE will be essential when dental staff return to work. The way we do dentistry will be different for some time, requiring changes to our equipment, materials and procedures.
Article
The purpose of this article is to provide an understanding of the differences between masks and respirators, guiding the reader to choose the correct face covering for the treatment to be carried out and, most importantly, enabling you to keep yourself, your staff and patients safe while carrying out dental procedures.
In the workplace we are trying to stop the inhalation of both chemical and biological agents. Chemical agents can include things such as dusts, fumes and mists, whereas biological agents include fungi, viruses and bacteria. Viruses are generally airborne and are transmitted as an aerosol when the virus joins with a water droplet. The generation of aerosols in everyday dental practice is virtually impossible to eliminate and the dental procedures that do and do not produce aerosols have been discussed at length in the dental press, but shall not be covered in any depth within this article.
If we assume that some dental procedures produce an aerosol, then we (and our staff) need to be adequately protected from it. As shown in Figure 1, the smaller the droplet, the greater the distance it can travel. The smallest aerosols can even travel into adjacent rooms.
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