A Message From Dr. James Hasken – Covid-19 Update

3/27/2020

Our office is currently closed for routine dental care due to the Covid-19 Coronavirus Pandemic. We are seeing emergencies on an appointment basis or in some cases by teledentistry or phone. Patient and staff safety is very important. We are closely monitoring CDC guidelines as well as state guidelines.

The health and safety of our patients, team, and community is and always has been our number one priority. The American Dental Association (ADA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended that we suspend non-urgent dental treatment until April 30, 2020, working only when a dental emergency arises. We have been following these protocols and appreciate the patience and understanding of everyone affected in this ever-changing situation.

We will remain open during abbreviated business hours to help our patients and our community during this difficult time with any urgent or emergent dental needs.

The ADA recommendations on emergency and urgent dental care is as follows:

Dental emergencies are potentially life threatening and require immediate treatment to stop ongoing tissue bleeding, alleviate severe pain or infection, and include:

• Uncontrolled bleeding

• Swelling that potentially compromises the patient’s airway

• Trauma involving facial bones, potentially compromising the patient’s airway

Urgent dental care focuses on the management of conditions that require immediate attention to relieve severe pain and/or risk of infection and to alleviate the burden on hospital emergency departments. These should be treated as minimally invasively as possible:

• Severe dental pain

• Wisdom tooth pain/infection

• Abscess resulting in pain and swelling

• Tooth fracture resulting in pain or causing soft tissue trauma

• Dental trauma

• Dental treatment required prior to critical medical procedures

• Final crown/bridge cementation if the temporary restoration is lost, broken, or causing gingival irritation

• Extensive dental caries or defective restorations causing pain

• Denture adjustments or repairs when function is impeded or causing pain

We will continue to follow the recommendations from the ADA and CDC. We are not seeing patients for elective treatment including routine hygiene (cleaning) appointments during these restrictions

Please know that we are available for you should you have any dental emergency. If you have any questions, please contact us by calling our office at (815) 385-0777. Should anything change with these recommendations we will share that information.

If you have been out of the country in the past 14 days, experienced coughing, aching and or fever, or tested positive for the Covid-19 virus, we would need to see you remotely by FaceTime or Zoom video conference. We can guide you through that process.

The goal of the shutdown is to do our part to reduce risk of spreading the virus as well as reduce the strain on shortages of personal protective equipment which are at severe shortages. We have an adequate supply currently.

When the restrictions have lifted, we have planned to add additional hygienist time in our schedules to relieve the backlog of patients who have been rescheduled due to the shutdown.

We wish for all of our patients, their families as well as our families to stay healthy during these challenging and uncertain times. Stay safe, healthy and positive as we will get through it.

James A. Hasken, DDS