Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Apr 15;22(1):128.
doi: 10.1186/s12903-022-02155-9.

Aerosol exposure of staff during dental treatments: a model study

Florentina Melzow  1 , Sarah Mertens  2 , Hristo Todorov  3 , David A Groneberg  4 , Sebastian Paris  2 , Alexander Gerber  4
Affiliations

Aerosol exposure of staff during dental treatments: a model study

Florentina Melzow et al. BMC Oral Health. .

Abstract

Background: Due to exposure to potentially infectious aerosols during treatments, the dental personnel is considered being at high risk for aerosol transmitted diseases like COVID-19. The aim of this study was to evaluate aerosol exposure during different dental treatments as well as the efficacy of dental suction to reduce aerosol spreading.

Methods: Dental powder-jet (PJ; Air-Flow®), a water-cooled dental handpiece with a diamond bur (HP) and water-cooled ultrasonic scaling (US) were used in a simulation head, mounted on a dental unit in various treatment settings. The influence of the use of a small saliva ejector (SE) and high-volume suction (HVS) was evaluated. As a proxy of aerosols, air-born particles (PM10) were detected using a Laser Spectrometer in 30 cm distance from the mouth. As control, background particle counts (BC) were measured before and after experiments.

Results: With only SE, integrated aerosol levels [median (Q25/Q75) µg/m3 s] for PJ [91,246 (58,213/118,386) µg/m3 s, p < 0.001, ANOVA] were significantly increased compared to BC [7243 (6501/8407) µg/m3 s], whilst HP [11,119 (7190/17,234) µg/m3 s, p > 0.05] and US [6558 (6002/7066) µg/m3 s; p > 0.05] did not increase aerosol levels significantly. The use of HVS significantly decreased aerosol exposure for PJ [37,170 (29,634/51,719) µg/m3 s; p < 0.01] and HP [5476 (5066/5638) µg/m3 s; p < 0.001] compared to SE only, even reaching lower particle counts than BC levels for HP usage (p < 0.001).

Conclusions: To reduce the exposure to potentially infectious aerosols, HVS should be used during aerosol-forming dental treatments.

Keywords: Aerosols; COVID-19; Dental staff; Dental suction; Oral medicine; SARS-CoV-2.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Scheme of experimental set-up. A Laser spectrometer, B inlet laser spectrometer, C phantom head, D high-speed handpiece, E saliva ejector, F high volume suction
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Results of measured aerosol concentrations with different suction types, grouped by procedure. Results shown as Loge Area under Curve PM10 Box-and-whisker-plots (box and thick line = 25th/75th percentiles and median, error bars = minima and maxima). Significant differences with background are indicated with hashes: # p < 0.05, ### p < 0.001; 1-way Welch’s ANOVA followed by Tamhane–Dunnett Many-to-One Comparison Test. Significant differences within treatment modalities are indicated with asterisks: **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001; two-way ANOVA followed by Tukey comparisons of marginal means
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Ahmed MA, Jouhar R, Ahmed N, Adnan S, Aftab M, Zafar MS, Khurshid Z. Fear and practice modifications among dentists to combat novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020;17(8):2821. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17082821. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Drosten C, Gunther S, Preiser W, van der Werf S, Brodt HR, Becker S, Rabenau H, Panning M, Kolesnikova L, Fouchier RA, et al. Identification of a novel coronavirus in patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome. N Engl J Med. 2003;348(20):1967–1976. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa030747. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Zaki AM, van Boheemen S, Bestebroer TM, Osterhaus AD, Fouchier RA. Isolation of a novel coronavirus from a man with pneumonia in Saudi Arabia. N Engl J Med. 2012;367(19):1814–1820. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1211721. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Wu Z, McGoogan JM. Characteristics of and important lessons from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak in China: summary of a report of 72,314 cases From the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. JAMA. 2020;323(13):1239–1242. doi: 10.1001/jama.2020.2648. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Setti L, Passarini F, De Gennaro G, Barbieri P, Perrone MG, Borelli M, Palmisani J, Di Gilio A, Piscitelli P, Miani A. Airborne transmission route of COVID-19: why 2 m/6 feet of inter-personal distance could not be enough. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020;17(8):2932. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17082932. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Publication types