Letters to the Editor

In March 2020, the UK entered its first national lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Most hospitals,¹ including the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (OMFS) unit in Norwich, paused their elective procedures and outpatient clinics. Dental practices closed their doors leading to the rapid establishment of Urgent Dental Centres (UDCs).²

In Norwich, we anticipated a rise in severe odontogenic infections presenting to OMFS resulting from this loss of primary care. On the contrary, however, we found that our emergency admissions had decreased during lockdown, and so we conducted a retrospective analysis. We collected data for 3 months before the lockdown (December 2019–February 2020) and compared this with a 3-month period during lockdown (April–June 2020; Table 1).

Our analysis revealed that before lockdown we had 34 admissions for cervicofacial infections compared with only 26 during lockdown. This is a notable decrease, but these account for more of our overall admissions during lockdown as there was a significant drop in maxillofacial trauma at the same time.