PREVALENCE OF PAIN MANAGEMENT DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

INTRODUCTION- Corona virus disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 virus causes severe Chronic pain management during COVID-19 pandemic is a challenging process. Management of pain was an important task during the pandemic due to safety protocols and safety measures as the disease showed spread through aerosols. Thus, this study shows the comparison of pain management before covid-19 and during the pandemic. MATERIALS AND METHOD- The study was conducted in Saveetha Dental College and Hospitals, with patients visiting for a period between september 2019 and march 2020. This study was donew based on the pain management records consisting of 151 patients reporting to the out patient ward of saveetha dental college. Patient age ,gender, emergency treatment done as per the records were collected. Telephonic and photographic cross verification of data was done by two examiners. The obtained data was entered in Ms Excel spreadsheet and the tabulated data was subjected to statistical software IBM SPSS version 20.0. Descriptive inferential statistics were done. RESULTS- 151 participants took part in the study out of which 63 participants were males and 88 participants were females. The study showed that 22 participants were aged from 0-20, 75 participants were aged between 20-40 years and 54 participants were aged >40 years of age. The study also showed that 66 participants had undergone emergency extraction, 30 participants had undergone emergency access opening and 55 participants were given medications for pain management.correlation between gender and emengery procedure for the management of pain showed that, 26 males underwent emergency extraction, 14 males underwent emergency access opening and 23 males underwent medication management for pain management and 40 females underwent emergency extraction, 16 females underwent emergency access opening and 32 females underwent medication management CONCLUSION- The study showed that pain management was done with increased prevalence during the pandemic and the most common procedure done was emergency extraction which had the highest frequency.