Yes, but every thing should be towards the good for general people.

Muhammed Ashraful Alam Agreed. Ethical and moral dental practices should be done by dental professionals with the help of Teledentistry tools in this pandemic situation.

Teledentistry is useful during the lockdown due to COVID-19 pandemic situation in India.

Mukesh Panwar True. But what about after lockdown period? Is the use of Teledentistry will be still continued or increased by Dental professionals?

There are different distal determinants for health and oral health. Focusing on teledentistry, shifting to appointment based practice, having air purifiers installed in the clinics doesn't address the distal most questions.

Covid19 has once again taken us to the much known and less bothered adage 'an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure'. I am sure that a transformation from need/demand based care to preventive care and regular supervision doesn't happen overnight, and will definitely be a time taking shift. However, what we must as a healthcare system must realise at this point is we need strong public health systems to facilitate this shift. Nevertheless, distal determinants are not meant to be addressed by an individual or a mere group of dentists.

At an individual level, teledentistry can be a viable option. Again, the use of a service depends on a lot of factors. So the success in Indian context would only be unravelled with time.

Muhammed Ashraful Alam Mukesh Panwar Ethical and legal aspects of Teledentistry:

Reference article:

Bhargava A, Sabbarwal B, Jaggi A, Chand S, Tandon S. Teledentistry: A literature review of evolution and ethicolegal aspects. J Global Oral Health 2019;2(2):128-33.

Mandar Todkar Mukesh Panwar I do clinical dental practice in Mumbai. I observed that the patients are not aware of Teledentistry and its use in a broad spectrum. More awareness is required and medicolegal aspect or issues of teledentistry should be addressed or resolved by the experts in the filed or the concerned authorities.

I agree with all answers

Viswa Chandu Agreed to your mentioned points such as distal determinants of oral health, prevention is better than cure, preventive care and regular supervision, the need for strong health care delivery system, require a collaborative approach, Indian scenario and time.

Pritam Yadav Agreed to your point of patient awareness regarding Teledentistry.

However,

There are some limitations of Teledentistry:

The major constraints in setting up of telehealth projects in India include technical infrastructure, training and cost of equipment, time management, lack of high-speed connection, low bandwidth, etc. Currently, other challenges such as to identify or get travel history of the COVID-19 patients as they might hide information, the ability to perform root canals or extractions over the virtual consult, and pay issues to the professionals who provide teleconsultation, etc.

Dr Mandar Todkar

I had not heard much about this and read what you have written above.

These are some links available that I have been looking at (and also listening to, as with the first one):

https://www.dentalprotection.org/uk/articles/webinar-teledentistry-in-a-covid-19-world

https://www.oralhealthgroup.com/blogs/how-covid-19-revealed-the-value-of-teledentistry/

Ghai, S. (2020). Teledentistry during COVID-19 pandemic. Diabetes & Metabolic Syndrome: Clinical Research & Reviews.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7297180/

Yes, an urgent need especially in India as dentistry is not considered as mainstream as medicine .

Mary C R Wilson I read the mentioned references you had shared.

1st one is a webinar, the second one is a blog, the third one is a review article published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Ghai S et al. (Jun 2020) concluded that "Teledentistry can offer a novel solution to resume dental practice during the current pandemic, hence, the need of the hour is to incorporate teledentistry into routine dental practice. If not fully replace, at least teledentistry can complement the existing compromised dental system during the current pandemic."

I agreed to the above conclusion but, awareness, feasibility and medico-legal issues related to the Teledentistry remains unanswered in many aspects with developing countries like India.

Concerned Government authorities should declare or provide the guidelines to address the problems or issues regarding the use of Teledentistry.

Mayank Das True.

In India, Dentistry is neglected when compared to Medicine in different aspects such as funding, national health policy, healthcare centre or hospital recruitment, government college establishment, employment and salary, social acceptance as a doctor, judged by handling the number of patients, testing or douting the knowledge and skill while performing maxillo-facial surgery, etc.

Hope it will change in upcoming years, as government and medical fraternity understood the importance of Dental and allied sciences fraternity in a global pandemic situation (COVID-19 disease).

Yes, Dentistry is not a separate branch and it is well understood that it is part of medicine itself so it should not be considered as a mistaken identity in future. This thought will sure help in betterment of people in current pandemic situation.

Thank you Dr Mandar Todkar for recommending my response. Yes, I realised when I referenced the review that it had the status that the others lacked. It is an interesting topic to read about and I'll continue to follow what is added to the column. Where I live, there is only dentistry for those with acute problems at the moment, as far as I know.

Dentists works in very close proximity to patients as such due to myrid procedures performed, there are aerosol generations and thereby, high risks of contamination for any air-borne or fomite borne infections.

Tele-consulations is therefore the need of the hour. But one thing I must high-light is that MCI as formulated that every doctor practising tele-consulations must be trained from MCI certified agencies before they can legally practice tele-consultations. Please, make sure from DCI as well, whether there is any similar legal implications.

For the consumers side, patient will surely be reluctant to embrace the altered scenario, but gradually this will become the new normal even post-covid ers, I seriously do hope.

Sumanta Chakraborty, I Agreed with your views. Till now, as per my knowledge, there are no agencies to certification or permission for teledentistry (teleconsultations). Recently, the Dental Council of India (DCI) published "An advisory to the dental professionals for COVID-19".

Available at the link: http://dciindia.gov.in/Admin/NewsArchives/Advisory%20for%20Dentists%20dated%2013.05.2020.pdf (last accessed on 17/07/2020).

I am agreed with all of you.Thanks. There should be common centralised body to govern all ,rather separate council as all are playing vital role in health care system.Or separate ministry like Ministry of AYUSH.This will sure help to achieve desired goal and also betterment of dentistry in future

Teledentistry is very important at this stage

There are a lot of aspects to talk about regarding teledentistry. Here are some articles on the topic.

Article Using Teledentistry to Improve Access to Dental Care for the...

Article The Future of Teledentistry

Article Teledentistry: A Key Component in Access to Care

Article Teledentistry in Practice: Literature Review

This is a good question and it should be added that teledentistry has long been existing, yet the existence of COVID-19 highlighted it. Sub-questions should or may also be added for an in-depth discussion on teledentistry.

Every dental treatment is like small or medium surgery. Teledentistry only can help diagnosis, if better, monitoring p't take medicine on time or not.

Teledentistry is an option for emergency treatment only. Dentistry is a very much clinicaly oriented. So we can only provide emergency medicine in case of severe pain. But that also we cannot prolong for a longer period. There are other associated fators like patient suffering from systemic disease, pregnancy etc , where we may have to be cautious during prescribing medicine also. So teledentistry is temporary sulution in relation to dentistry. But due to this COViD situation we may have to opt for it as a temporery measure.

I live and work in Tijuana Mexico, since 15 years ago. I have used Skype or other means of communication since long time. I have a good feeling for tele dentistry becuase you perceive more of the person. Phone is also good. even emails if you know how to read between lines. I think I have survived thanks to that. I have no referals, friends or family in this area. With COVID 19. is only to hear very carefull what the need is, and accomodate the patien's need. thank you. Maite Moreno DDS, MS

Teledentistry is indeed a very good option for the people who has access to that facilility. But for those living in the rural areas of a country like India, it may not be possible. But otherwise teledentistry is better option for the patient who need medication, minimise appointment, undue exposure etc.

Of course teledentistry is an good opportunity in this Covid situation. We are doing in our Govt. set up. Patients also quite satisfied except those who need urgent treatment.

Teledentistry emerged as perhaps the strongest means of rendering essential health and oral health related services to patients and individuals residing in remote. Tertiary care centers could reach the unreachable with teledentistry.

Yes. This might be country dependant, but it has certainly given many the impetus to implement Telehealth/teledentistry, where it might not have been deemed as "urgent" before

Absolutely, but costs and acceptability remain issues particularly when it comes to reimbursement from insurance companies

In a pandemic situation like COVID-19 which is spread through the droplet, it is a critical situation for Dentists as they work in the oral cavity. For that reason, only emergency treatments are provided by the dentist instead of a regular dental check-up. In a situation like this time, Teledentistry provides management of diseases affecting the orofacial region. we can check photos provided by the patients of the affected area. And photos may help us in reaching a proper diagnosis and providing management.

The World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared the COVID-19 pandemic as a public health emergency of international concern. Despite global efforts to contain the disease spread, the outbreak is still on a rise because of the community spread pattern of this infection. Dental professionals are at high risk for nosocomial infection and can become potential carriers of the disease. The global lockdown of educational institutions is going to cause major disruption to students' learning and cancellation of their yearly assessments. Shifting to online learning is needed in this era and effective in implementing dental virtual simulation in preclinical and clinical courses during pandemics is needed. Teledentistry has the potential to change the dynamics of the dental care delivery system. Therefore, Teledentistry can save a life by freeing up an emergency room bed and the dental industry can play a vital role in flattening the curve in the COVID-19 pandemic situation.