Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals NHS Trust, St Thomas' Hospital, Westminster Bridge Road, London, SE1 7EH, UK.
Eur Arch Paediatr Dent. 2021 Jun;22(3):507-513. doi: 10.1007/s40368-020-00589-9. Epub 2021 Jan 3.
The UK government introduced a nationwide lockdown on the 23rd March 2020 to prevent the spread of COVID-19. All elective hospital and dental practice assessments and procedures were mandated to stop. Key hospital dental workers were required to work, and Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust became a designated Urgent Dental Care Centre (UDC) for the greater London area. The paediatric dental emergency walk-in service was suspended and replaced with a telephone triage system and evaluation of digital images sent by parents/carers when needed. The aim of this paper is to describe the emergency service provided by staff in the department of Paediatric Dentistry at St Thomas' Hospital during the first lockdown.
A prospective service evaluation of the modified paediatric dental emergency service was carried out between 25th March and 29th May 2020.
Four-hundred and sixty-four patients accessed the paediatric dental emergency service via telephone during the service evaluation period. Of these, 192 (41%) had dental pain, 121 (26%) had pain and swelling of dental origin, and 89 (19%) had trauma.
Remote telephone consultations and digital photographs were useful to screen emergency paediatric dental patients, but lack of face-to-face consultations with radiographic assessment and access to general anaesthetic services were major limiting factors.
英国政府于 2020 年 3 月 23 日实施了全国封锁，以防止 COVID-19 的传播。所有选择性的医院和牙科评估和程序都被强制停止。关键的医院牙科工作人员被要求工作，而盖伊和圣托马斯国民保健信托基金会成为大伦敦地区的指定紧急牙科护理中心（UDC）。儿科牙科急诊随到随诊服务暂停，改为电话分诊系统，并在需要时评估家长/照顾者发送的数字图像。本文的目的是描述圣托马斯医院儿科牙科部门在第一次封锁期间提供的紧急服务。
在 2020 年 3 月 25 日至 5 月 29 日期间，对改良的儿科牙科急诊服务进行了前瞻性服务评估。
在服务评估期间，有 464 名患者通过电话访问了儿科牙科急诊服务。其中，192 名（41%）有牙痛，121 名（26%）有牙源性疼痛和肿胀，89 名（19%）有外伤。
远程电话咨询和数字照片有助于筛选急诊儿科牙科患者，但缺乏面对面咨询、放射评估和普通麻醉服务是主要的限制因素。
