Knowledge, attitude, and behaviour of dentists working during the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-sectional survey.

BACKGROUND: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has immensely affected the world's population at physical and psychosocial levels. Dentists are no different from other healthcare providers, as they are equally if not more exposed to the threat of getting infected. OBJECTIVE: To assess the experience and behavior of public and private sector dentists practicing during the COVID-19 pandemic and their knowledge about it. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey was conducted online by sharing google forms through email, WhatsApp, and Facebook. The survey included questions on the knowledge, attitude, and behavior of dentists practicing during COVID-19. The data was interpreted by SPSS 24 using a chi-square test, and a value of p < 0.05 was considered significant. RESULTS: A considerable number of general dentists (26.9%) and specialists (39.4%) adopted partial suspension of clinics. Restriction's ease allowed 50.2% of the clinicians to resume their duties. 67.9% of the patients were medicated online during the lockdown phase. There was no significant difference regarding years of experience and willingness to treat/care (p-value 0.648). Personal protective equipment (PPE) was readily available for use in public or private practices, and the respondents agreed with its efficacy in protecting the operators. Compliance with PPE wear was 50% in all the respondents. CONCLUSION: The psychosocial repercussion of the pandemic continues to affect dental practices. Our attitude needs to improve as far as PPE is concerned, with regular training workshops and continuous updates of the developing Knowledge on COVID-19.

Nasoalveolar molding of bilateral cleft of the lip and palate infants with orthopaedic ring plate.

OBJECTIVE: To introduce a simple, self-retentive and cost effective presurgical infant orthopaedic plate with anterior ring to retract and align the grossly protruded and deviated pre-maxilla and to perform the nasoalveolar moulding in order to facilitate initial lip repair. METHOD: The study was conducted in the orthodontic department of dental section of CH & ICH Lahore. The nonprobable purposive sample consisted of 35 subjects (27 males, 8 females) with a median age of 7 days (1-13 days). Nonsyndromic patients with bilateral complete cleft lip and palate were included in the study, patients were treated with custom made orthopaedic plate with an acrylic ring around the protruded premaxilla for around 3 months. Anthropometric readings and cast impressions were used to calculate the pre and post treatment differences, the data was tabulated and analysed using SPSS v 12. RESULTS: The results showed highly significant (<.005) difference between the pre and post treatment records of variables except the intercanine distance where the results are significant, i.e., (< 0.05). CONCLUSION: The orthopaedic plate causes significant retraction of the premaxillary segment without applying extra oral forces. It produces columellar elongation and increase in prolabium length facilitating the primary cheiloplasty and rhinoplasty to be precise and without additional scarring