Potential for Spatial Laminar Airflow to Prevent Interdental-Chair Contamination in Multichair Dental Operatories

The dental clinic has for a long time been considered as a risky place for infection dissemination. Due to aerosol generating procedures, the risk of cross-transmission in dental clinics has recently risen. Open dental clinics should undergo present-time reassessment concerning infection control, in particular, to consider the implications of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic for today’s advanced technological and medical practices. It might be necessary to make urgent and appropriate modifications to the design of air circulation systems in the dental environment to prevent microbial transmission.

In order to minimise cross-transmission in multi-chair dental operatories, we have designed two model ventilation systems with 12 and 36 air change/hour capacities and with laminar airflow direction. The conditioned air directly blows into the dental treatment units, especially into the aerosol generating area, where the contamination is more concentrated. We hypothesise that these new designs could serve to isolate dental treatment units to function separately like closed dental operatories while keeping them open to each other.

Thorough physical and biological investigations will be required to determine how these designs can be applied effectively in terms of the required spatial separation of dental treatment units in the open multi- chair dental operatories.