Análise da recuperação dos serviços odontológicos especializados após a pandemia de Covid-19

Abstract

The availability of dental procedures was significantly reduced during the COVID-19 pandemic, and even with a partial recovery in the post-pandemic period, there remains a lower volume of clinical care, especially in specialized care. In this context, the study aimed to analyze the social and structural characteristics related to the recovery of productivity in Dental Specialty Centers (CEO) after the COVID-19 pandemic. An ecological observational study was conducted on the production of the endodontics, periodontics, and oral surgery specialties. The year 2019 was considered as a reference for usual production, with extreme values excluded from the analyses. Secondary data were collected from the 964 Brazilian municipalities with CEOs through the Department of Informatics of the Ministry of Health and the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). The data were imported into Jamovi software, where Wilcoxon and Fischer's exact tests were applied. The results showed that the recovery of CEO production capacity was related to structural and social indicators. Specifically, low coverage of oral health teams and a high percentage of the employed population were associated with a lower recovery of specialized dental production. Thus, it was concluded that there was no complete recovery of specialties by 2022, and that municipalities with lower structural indicators and better social indicators faced more difficulties in resuming normal production during the analyzed period.