C4 IMPLANT TRIBUNE Dental Tribune Middle East & Africa Edition | 1/2021 “We have increased investment in safety precautions” AD . d e v r e s e r s t h g i r l l A l . a n o r i S y p s t n e D 8 1 0 2 © 3 0 8 1 - X S U - 7 5 4 1 7 6 2 3 . ™ r o ® s l o b m y s e h t g n i s u t o n y b s k r a m e d a r t s t i o t t h g i r y n a e v i a w t o n s e o d a n o r i S y p s t n e D l lower quality implant prostheses. These are principally for large-scale rehabilitation, with the employment of largely standardized approaches that, by necessity, involve greater simplification. For more information about the full Dent- sply Sirona portfolio, please contact your local representative. Dentsply Sirona 21st Floor, The Bay Gate Tower Business Bay, Al Sa’ada Street Dubai, United Arab Emirates Tel.: +971 (0)4 523 0600 Web: www.dentsplysirona.com/en E-mail: MEA-Marketing@dentsplysirona.com Dr Marco Degidi Xive® Built-in smartness The Xive S implant system is as individual as each patient. Its flexibility and ease-of-use have set the bar in dental practices and their laboratories for more than two decades. Prefabricated and patient-specific components give you the greatest possible restorative freedom, enabling you to confidently and cost-effectively restore smiles. The unique TempBase concept, included with every Xive S implant, facilitates immediate temporary restorations. Convenient for you, even better for your patients. So, isn’t it time you too experienced how Xive can simplify your everyday work? Smartness in practice. Xive by Dentsply Sirona Implants. By Dentsply Sirona We asked five dental professionals how COVID-19 has affected their businesses and what they predict will happen once the pandemic is over. Below, Dr Marco Degidi, who lives in severely hit Italy, points out that air quality should be high on everyone’s agenda and projects a two-track fu- ture for implant dentistry. How did the COVID-19 pan- demic affect your everyday work, Dr Degidi? When the epidemic started, we com- pletely ceased all clinical activities for two entire months, except for a few very urgent cases. What is your current situation like? Have you begun treating patients again? Following the end of Phase 1 of the lockdown, we gradually resumed seeing patients. Now, around eight months after the beginning of Phase 2, our clinical activities are somewhat reduced compared to what it was like before the crisis. What has been the most pro- found change to your daily business due to COVID-19? Of course, our work has always in- volved minimizing the risk of in- fections. However, it is one thing to protect yourself, your staff, and pa- tients from bloodborne viruses such as HIV and HCV, and entirely dif- ferent to take preventive measures against an airborne virus. We have made significant investments in air filtering, sanitizing equipment and advanced PPE (personal protection equipment). There has also been a noteworthy increase in the time re- quired for each appointment as we take the utmost care at every phase. This includes questionnaires, tem- perature taking, isolating personal possessions, disinfecting and so on. All this slows the procedure down, in short – our expenses have increased, and we see fewer patients. Do you think COVID-19 will have a lasting effect on implant dentistry? If so, how? Only regarding what I have stated already, i.e. increased investment in safety precautions, which need to be particularly good as implant pro- cedures are long and often involve a large number of staff in a small, con- fined space. I believe that dentists did not pay enough attention to air quality before the epidemic. And I really hope all the measures adopted because of COVID-19, including neg- ative room pressure, filtering, disin- fecting and so on, will still be used once the crisis has passed. What are your general thoughts on the future for the implant dentistry? I see a two-track future for implant dentistry. The first is one with ad- vanced high-quality implant pros- theses. These, unfortunately, involve higher costs and are beyond the reach of many, even if a greater num- ber of people will be able to afford single elements and small bridges of this quality. The second is good, but