Cleft and COVID-19 Pandemic: Controversial Aspects of Social Distancing.

Nabavizadeh, Sara Sadat; Nadjmi, Nasser; Vardanjani, Hossein Molavi

ABSTRACT In the meantime, as COVID-19 has gone pandemic, social distancing has become inevitable; therefore, most in-person visits have been canceled to minimize the spread of the disease. This will greatly impact cleft palate patients as it will limit their chance to receive timely care and have persistent follow-up, and that could in turn delay its management so significantly that it could cause much more considerable complications. To mitigate the issue, it seems necessary to start integrating modern-day technologies into the everyday practice of physicians and to benefit from the opportunities it provides. Much of medical decision making is cognitive, and telemedicine can provide easy access to specialists who are not immediately available. With wide internet access, this task is more than feasible. Telemedicine and other modern facilities are very promising platforms that could fill the gap that has been made by social distancing. We tried to address some of these issues as well as give recommendations for possible solutions to each of them.