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. 2021 Jun 27;18(13):6905.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph18136905.

Dental Education during the COVID-19 Pandemic in a German Dental Hospital

Julia Winter  1 , Roland Frankenberger  1 , Frank Günther  2 , Matthias Johannes Roggendorf  1
Affiliations

Dental Education during the COVID-19 Pandemic in a German Dental Hospital

Julia Winter et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

Due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, dental treatment performed by undergraduate students at the University of Marburg/Germany was immediately stopped in spring 2020 and stepwise reinstalled under a new hygiene concept until full recovery in winter 2020/21. Patient treatment in the student courses was evaluated based on three aspects: (1) Testing of patients with a SARS-CoV-2 Rapid Antigen (SCRA) Test applied by student assistants (SA); (2) Improved hygiene regimen, with separated treatment units, cross-ventilation, pre-operative mouth rinse and rubber dam application wherever possible; (3) Recruitment of patients: 735 patients were pre-registered for the two courses; 384 patients were treated and a total of 699 tests with the SCRA test were performed by SAs. While half of the patients treated in the course were healthy, over 40% of the patients that were pre-registered but not treated in the course revealed a disease being relevant to COVID (p < 0.001). 46 patients had concerns to visit the dental hospital due to the increase of COVID incidence levels, 14 persons refused to be tested. The presented concept was suitable to enable patient treatment in the student course during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2 Rapid Antigen Test; dental education; online learning; patient treatment by students.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Setup of the patients’ waiting and test area in front of the dental clinic.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The dental clinic of Marburg (Building A) from the outside (rear/forest view left, City view right; OEP Department on the top floor). The arrangement of the course room of the OEP Department is shown in the middle row (left) with the course room before installation of the separations and new dental units in shown allowing a click-in mounting of the dummies in the dental chairs (2019), the right image in the middle row shows the new dental units with existing separations mandatory for the patient treatment in the students’ courses during the pandemic.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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