Beyond Clinical Care, Teledentistry is Useful

During COVID-19 lockdowns last year, when RSDM was only treating emergency patients on site, faculty established a teledentistry system that's no longer used for routine clinical care but has been incorporated in other capacities.

Since the peak of the pandemic, teledentistry has been used  for tobacco cessation, and outreach for oral health and nutritional education, said Dr. Peter Duda, a faculty member in the Department of Restorative Dentistry, who helped established the system in the spring of 2020.

“It’s not something that only needs to be done in a crisis situation,’’ he contends.

From March 2020, when the state went into lockdown, until late June, when doctors and dentist offices were allowed to reopen for elective procedures, teledentistry became an important form of care. A rotating team of faculty members created and operated the system.

Each day, between four and six faculty members would come to the school and field calls. “The patients would send a picture or use their camera to illuminate their mouths,’’ said Duda. “We would determine what their cases involved, instruct them as to whether their problem was an emergency or not and recommend viable treatment options. Most of the time, we could come up with a diagnosis or at least an educated guess.’’

The experience has convinced Duda that teledentistry has benefits that can augment traditional in-person care and is something that could be even more widely used in the future. “It actually alleviates patients’ fear,” he said. “They don’t hear the whine of a high speed dentist drill or experience other sights and sounds that can make them nervous. It can be more conducive to patients seeing their dentist regularly.”