Peculiarities of prevalence and distribution patterns and treatment approaches of maxillofacial traumatic injuries within the conditions COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Annotation. According to previous studies there are specific territorial, social and culturally associated patterns of prevalence and distribution of maxillofacial injuries within quarantine restrictions regarding their etiology and mechanism of occurrence in different countries, which in turn could provoke changes among individual components of generally accepted recommendations used during the treatment of patients with traumatic maxillofacial lesions under conditions of lockdown and COVID-19 pandemic. Objective – to determine the main features of the maxillofacial traumatic lesions prevalence and distribution patterns and to systematize the main changes in the protocols of specialized dental care used for the treatment of patients with traumatic lesions of the maxillofacial structures during COVID-19 pandemic. During the course of the analytical study, retrospective epidemiological data related to the prevalence of maxillofacial injuries during 2020 was processed, and comparative analysis of the obtained data with similar indicators registered during the control periods of 2018–2019 was provided. After the content analysis of available recommendations considering specifics of patients stratification, prioritization and features of certain types of surgical interventinos associated with the need for treatment maxillofacial trauma cases of varying severity, their systematization was carried out within the Microsoft Excel 2019 (Microsoft Office 2019, Microsoft) in the form of text blocks with the subsequent construction of structural and logical schemes. It was found that in the context of a global analysis provided among medical institutions that specialized at the surgical treatment of patients with various types of maxillofacial lesions, general decreasing tendency of their activity and specific reduction in elective manipulations amount were noted during 2020. The most common maxillofacial trauma cases under the conditions of quarantine restrictions were those caused by the factors of fall in house conditions and interpersonal conflicts; the amount of road traffic accident-associated maxillofacial injuries significantly decreased. There was a pronounced prioritization of those types of maxillofacial surgeries, ignoring of which could provoke life-threat for the patient; in addition, there was an increase in the number of cases of traumatic lesions treatment with closed reduction methods and a decrease in the frequency of treatment methods based on the principles of open reduction and internal fixation during COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, under the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic a general reduction tendency regarding prevalence of maxillofacial traumatic lesions was noted, which was supported with the decrease in number of registered cases considering patients referral to the maxillofacial specialists. In order to optimize the process of providing dental care in general and to carry out appropriate surgical interventions in the maxillofacial region in particular, a number of strictly specialized, general preventive and related recommendations and directives were additionally developed.