Dental Fallow Time Calculator launched

Built by digital consent platform Flynotes, supported by Practice Plan and Wesleyan, and endorsed by the Chief Dental Officer for England, the new tool complements the Covid-19 guidance published by the Faculty of General Dental Practice UK (FGDP) and the College of General Dentistry (CGDent), the recent update of which incorporates the Scottish Dental Clinical Effectiveness Programme (SDCEP) recommendations on fallow time.

Public Health England guidance currently recommends a fallow period of 60 minutes in a treatment room with less than 10 air changes per hour from the point that an aerosol-generating procedure is completed. The FGDP-CGDent guidance recommends that practitioners justify any decision to stray from this, record factors which allow reduction of the time, and include details in the clinical record for each patient.

The Fallow Time Calculator is designed to facilitate this process and is based on SDCEP’s multifactorial approach to determining fallow time. Set out in its recent publication, Mitigation of Aerosol Generating Procedures in Dentistry - A Rapid Review, this sets a ‘benchmark’ time of 15 to 30 minutes, which will vary dependent on the type and length of procedure, the employment of procedural mitigations such as high-volume suction and rubber dam, and the availability of environmental mitigations such as air ventilation.