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There is no doubt that epidemics and pandemics have transformed dentistry beyond recognition. In this commentary we recapitulate the possible reasons for the emergence of major global epidemics and pandemics, how and why they emerge, and the successful attempts of the dental profession to mitigate infectious transmission in the clinic, which in turn has metamorphosed our profession today. We also peer into the future of dentistry through the prism of the new conceptual approach of ‘one world, one health’ recently declared by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Finally, we discuss five realms of dentistry that have been irretrievably impacted by the recent COVID-19 pandemic, viz vaccines, point of care diagnostics, teledentistry, reinforced infection control, and dental pedagogy.
CPD/Clinical Relevance: Vaccines and vaccinations have become integral to societal wellbeing and the prevention of global pandemics.
Article
Attempts to prevent infection and epidemics were rooted even before the postulate of ‘the germ theory of disease’ was proposed by Louis Pasteur in 1860s. For instance, in 1846, Semmelweis, a Hungarian physician, noted that the mortality from childbed fever among women in gynaecology wards in hospitals could be significantly reduced by the surgeons washing their hands in chlorinated lime solution before maternal contact.1 Six years later, John Snow, a British physician, applied statistics and epidemiological approaches to determine and eradicate the source of a cholera outbreak in London. 2 He traced the outbreak source to a contaminated water pump in Broad Street, London, UK, and from whence the concept of public health was born.2
Half a century earlier, in the late 1700s, one of the most profound events in medicine that have thus far saved virtually millions of lives globally occurred, also near London. That was the invention of the smallpox vaccines by Edward Jenner, much before the theory of asepsis was conceived by Joseph Lister at the Royal Infirmary in Glasgow, Scotland. Since then, vaccines and vaccinations have become integral to societal wellbeing and the prevention of global pandemics, COVID-19 being the most recent example, in this century.3
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