Perspectives on meeting the COVID‐19 testing challenge: A dental school collaborative

• Published in: Journal of Dental Education 2020-09, Vol.84 (9), p.950-954
• Main Authors: Donoff, R. Bruce, Poznansky, Mark, Kochman, David, Lieberthal, Bruce, Bhansali, Seema, Neale, Allison, Bryant, Daniel, Glickman, Robert, Moursi, Amr, Feldman, Cecile A., Fine, Daniel, Kess, Steve, Alfano, Michael C., Levy, Ari, Ismail, Amid, Rams, Thomas, Reddy, Michael, Gansky, Stuart, Ramneek, Rai, McCauley, Laurie K., Eber, Robert, Wolff, Mark, Krumholz, Harlan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: diagnosis/treatment planning < clinical skills/topics; medically compromised patients < medical; patient care management < patient affairs; patient‐provider interaction < patient affairs
• ISSN: 0022-0337; 1930-7837
• DOI: 10.1002/jdd.12395

The shared goals of dental clinicians were to treat patients as safely as possible through optimal use of PPE with disinfection and aerosol mitigation protocols to minimize the risk of viral transmission in the dental office or school clinic. Since initial state and federal pandemic efforts focused on treating the sickest patients, hospital capacity, mass testing, and the global PPE supply, a group of dental schools recognized that dental practices would benefit greatly from the ability to evaluate the viral status of their patients using office‐based, point‐of‐care (POC) tests, ideally using sputum, saliva, and/or finger stick blood samples. Since private dental offices and most dental schools lack the analytic instrumentation and the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendment (CLIA) certifications to conduct the types of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) viral tests prevalent in the early days of the outbreak, the group of schools focused on POC tests, which did not require CLIA certified labs or expensive equipment. The initial goal of identifying the best POC test—be it antigen, antibody, or viral—was elusive, although each school did identify alternative approaches to evaluate their students, faculty, staff, and patients, and developed careful approaches to re‐opening their clinics. Initial efforts to detect SARS‐CoV‐2 used standard PCR methods that were accurate but time consuming and required equipment and trained personnel. [...]these methods had limited utility due to the high demand, slow response time, expense, and required laboratory expertise.