Challenges of dental practice in El Salvador, in the face of the pandemic Covid-19 world

Abstract

The high contagiousness of the COVID-19 virus, determined by its transmission mechanism, through microdroplets that are spread by aerosols when coughing, speaking or sneezing, put professionals such as dentists on the front line of contagion, especially due to distance. working area between the patient's mouth and the operator. The general objective of this study was to describe the challenges of dental practice in El Salvador in the face of the global covid-19 pandemic. Quantitative, descriptive, prospective and cross-sectional research, with a convenience sample of 112 subjects who practice dentistry in El Salvador, from public, private and academic fields. Virtual surveys were applied to them with the Google forms tool. The resulting information was tabulated and analyzed in the statistical program SPSS version 23. All the respondents use protocols of
biosafety for the development of their clinical activities and these vary between national and international protocols. Regarding treatment costs, most of them have had an increase of between 5-10 dollars per patient. The level of depression, anxiety and stress, in the sum of the scale, none presented at 0, highlighting that 30% of them presented stress and anxiety from mild to extremely severe.