The spread of the COVID‐19 virus has significantly impacted global health and economies. As a result, many researchers have focused on studying such viruses to develop methods to prevent their spread. Dental surgery presents a high risk of infection due to the large number of aerosol particles generated during procedures. Therefore, this research is aimed at studying the distributions of air and particles dispersed during ultrasonic scaling, which can be used as guidelines to prevent infection for dentist and dental assistant. Air and aerosol particles flow behavior were predicted using computational fluid dynamics simulations. The model used was based on the Euler–Lagrange approach, considering air as a continuous phase and aerosol particles as dispersed phase. Factors studied included the positions of the dental operating lamp, air supply, and air ventilation. It was found that all the factors studied affected the distribution of air and particles within the system. The conditions that reduce the risk of infection for workers were assessed by the number of particles scattered around the worker′s face. The dental operating lamp should be installed at the level of the operator′s head. The air supply should be installed on the ceiling between the operators, with the airstream acting as a curtain to prevent particle spread to the operator. The air ventilation should be installed on the wall at the center of the patient′s bed to help reduce particle spread within the system.
Khongprom et al. (Thu,) studied this question.