To all our patients:
While the provincial government is implementing stricter guidelines and stay-at-home orders, dental offices continue to be deemed essential health care and will continue to stay open.
With the direction from the Royal Collage of Dental Surgeons and Public Health Units, our office, like other dental offices, have implemented a series of strict protocols to greatly minimize viral transmission. Following these strict protocols, not a single dental office in Ontario has experienced a COVID-19 outbreak related to dental treatment.
Our office, since reopening in June, has seen thousands of individual patients and we are happy to say we are not aware of a single case of transmission associated with dental treatment. As always, we have gone above and beyond on all regulations so we can ensure the safety of patients, doctors, and staff alike. Patient safety is of the utmost priority at Kay Dental Care.
Since the lockdowns began, in the spring of last year, we have seen a noticeable deterioration in our patient’s oral health: more cavities, severely decayed teeth, progressing gum disease etc. This is especially true with teenagers and young children. This is a universal observation in all dental offices, not our office alone. Granted, not everyone is affected the same. We can attribute this to a series of obvious factors: poor diet and oral hygiene care while at home for prolonged periods of time, break in previous routines, stress, metal fatigue and most importantly, lack of preventative and hygiene care in the dental office.
Understandably, due to dental offices being closed for a few months, most patients had fallen behind. We have tirelessly worked to book all patients that had their appointments cancelled and we are still catching up with backlog from the spring closures. In addition to extending our workdays and hours, Dr. Filo, Dr. Hormoz and our incredible staff have not taken a single week off since reopening to accommodate every patient in need: urgent or otherwise. Despite the higher risk for health care workers, our commitment to our patients remains unwavering. We will continue to do so for as long as it takes to return to normal.
We strongly recommend all our patients to keep or book their hygiene care appointments. Preventive care is the best care. Good oral health is paramount in maintaining good systemic health and a robust immune system. Your hygiene care appointment is not only a tooth cleaning but a check for overall oral health. Your long-term oral health greatly depends on routine screening. A small cavity now will turn into a root canal or tooth infection later. In the wake of this pandemic, we all need our immune systems working at 100 percent instead of dealing with unnecessary tooth infections.
We will continue to make every effort to contact all our patients and book them for hygiene care. If you have missed your hygiene appointment or have fallen behind with your hygiene care, please call us to book your appointment. If you have questions regarding your oral health or want to discuss our infection control protocols, do not hesitate to contact the doctors directly.
We remain humbled and eternally grateful for your continued loyalty and support! We can’t wait to see you all!
Sincerely,
Dr. Elvis Filo, Dr. Alborz Hormoz and the Kay Dental Care Team
