Open Collections

Amaniampong, Kevin

University of British Columbia

Objectives: Our primary objective was to determine if differences exist between the estimated and actual numbers of teeth requiring treatment and the time required under general anesthesia for dental treatment in virtual and in-person dental consultations. Secondarily, we assessed the distance from the primary residence to BC Children's Hospital (BCCH) for families using consultations. Methods: A retrospective chart review was conducted for patients meeting the criteria. Data were collected for both types of consultations, including patient demographics, estimated treatment information (predicted treatment time and number of teeth planned for treatment), presence of caregiver-obtained pretreatment photographs, and actual treatment outcomes. The average percent difference was calculated by determining the difference between measured and predicted values and expressing this difference as a percentage of the measured value. Based on photograph presence and quality, the virtual consultation group was further split into no, poor, fair or excellent pretreatment photographs. One-way ANOVA with Tukey’s post hoc testing and unpaired T-tests were performed using Prism V10.0. Human ethics # H21-02433. Results: A total of 321 patients [Mean Age = 76.277± 49.4 months] were included. There were 183 (57%) in-person and 138 (43%) virtual consultations. Out of the virtual consultations, 97 (70%) included pretreatment photographs, while 41 (30%) did not include pretreatment photographs. The average difference in the predicted versus the actual time needed for treatment was significantly higher in virtual health consultations with poor pretreatment photographs (105.2%, p= 0.0003) compared to in-person consultations (35.3%). The remaining groups showed no significant differences. No significant differences were also found in the percentage difference in teeth treated between the consultation types. Significant differences (p = 0.003) were observed between the average distance traveled to the hospital between all virtual (138km) and in-person (60.8km) patient consultations. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that virtual dental consultations can be effective for planning dental treatment under general anesthesia, especially for families who live farther away. Our study highlights that photographs may not be essential in treatment planning for virtual patients, making it feasible for more widespread adoption of virtual consultations for pediatric dental treatment under general anesthesia.

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2024-07-04

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/88573

Craniofacial Science

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/