EC Dental Science

Introduction and Objective: Home remedies and quick management of urgent conditions could be available information to people through internet searches. But that itself could result in worsening the conditions known by the majority of dental patients in Saudi Arabia. In order to reach our objective, we have to: Evaluate the knowledge of dental patients in Saudi Arabia regarding managing common orodental urgencies, and determine the most common approaches they used to solve their problems. The objective of this study is to evaluate the need for structured distant dental consultation and prescription services in Saudi Arabia.

Materials and Methods: A cross sectional study consisted of a survey that was conducted in May, 2021. An online questionnaire was in English and Arabic versions using Google forms was used to collect the data. The questionnaire consists of a series of questions related to demographic characteristics and orodental problems as experienced by the patient during the lockdown. A convenience sampling technique was used in this study. All the participants were informed about the purpose of the survey and the confidentiality of their responses.

Results: We had a 100% response rate with 210 respondents completed the survey within the 7 days of the publication of the questionnaire. Regarding what we need most in Saudi Arabia to manage orodental problems in such situations 41.4% of the respondents suggested distant dental consultation and prescription services, 39.5% suggested more oral health education about these types of approaches, 50.5% suggested dental emergency clinics, 45.7% suggested mobile dental clinics, 4.8% suggested that we have enough dental services, 3.3% suggested others such as availability of dental clinics at all times, affordable prices, apply penalties.

Conclusion: Our study shown that the respondents have managed these conditions during the lockdown by different ways, most of them went to emergency clinics to take medications to alleviate their symptoms, and they asked relatives and friends about treatments, which suggests the need for more structured distant dental services. Further research should be done to include a bigger sample size and more cities of Saudi Arabia.

Keywords: Covid19; Dental; Lockdown; Treatment; Teledentistry; Anxiety

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