Paediatric dental A&E service during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dear Editor,

We would like to share ideas on the article entitled “Paediatric dental A&E service during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Greater London area (Patel et al. 2021).” Patel et al. (2021) concluded that “Remote telephone consultations and digital photographs were useful to screen emergency paediatric dental patients, but lack of face-to-face consultations with radiographic assessment and access to general anaesthetic services were major limiting factors.” Indeed, there are many other possible problems that should be mentioned. First, the internet speed plays important role in communication. The remote setting might experience the problem of disrupted internet communication. Additionally, some practitioner might experience the technological barrier for starting telehealth communication (Imlach et al. 2020). Second, the paediatric patient might have problem in giving factual content in telephone communication. There might be incorrect data giving. Selection of cases for telephone consultation, which is an important point for a good communication (Hasani et al. 2020), might not possible for emergency case. Third, the privacy of communication is important. There must be the security system to protect patient’s privacy. Last, there must be a good training for staff for using the system.