Monkeypox is not a new disease but it is a worldwide problem. As of Monday there were more than 11,000 confirmed U.S. cases and 336 confirmed cases in Pennsylvania alone.
The current monkeypox outbreak was recently declared a U.S. public health emergency, and now one local hospital network is asking area dentists to help slow its spread.
“This disease is not as easily transmitted as COVID-19,” said Dr. Jeffrey Jahre, St. Luke’s University Health Network’s Senior Vice President of Medical and Academic Affairs and Section Chief Emeritus of Infectious Diseases, in a news release Monday. “Early recognition by all healthcare providers, including dentists, can potentially bring the spread of this disease to a halt.”
Jahre and St. Luke’s are calling on the local dental community to be on the alert for monkeypox now that SLUHN doctors have begun seeing oral monkeypox symptoms.
Among the disease’s hallmark symptoms are fever, muscle aches, lymph node swelling and rash, as well as oral lesions in up to 70 percent of diagnosed cases, Jahre said.
Last week, the American Dental Association also took steps to help slow the spread of monkeypox by issuing a member advisory relaying the CDC’s basic monkeypox guidance.
“Importantly, the ADA stressed that the standard infection control precautions used by dentists for decades, including the enhanced protocols that have been implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic, continue to keep both patients and staff safe during the monkeypox emergency,” the St. Luke’s University Health Network news release said.
Monkeypox is commonly transmitted through direct contact with the body fluids or lesions of someone who has the disease, and less commonly is spread through materials that have touched infectious skin lesions or sores. Monkeypox may be transmitted via sexual contact, and the CDC has recently updated its recommendations for ways to prevent transmission between sexual partners.
Close contact with respiratory droplet secretions may be another uncommon mode of spread, although the exact frequency is unknown, according to public health experts.
“It is very important at this time that oral care programs, such as those that train dental hygienists and other dental professionals, are aware of and alert to oral monkeypox symptomology and understand how to handle cases,” said Dr. Wayne Saunders, DMD, Chief of St. Luke’s Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery.
“Facial lesions can vary in number and location, including lips, and can be papules, pustules, clear vesicles or open sores with or without scab formation,” the news release said. “The intraoral lesions are equally diverse and could be present anywhere in the mouth, including gums, tongue, cheeks, palate and throat. These lesions can resemble other well-known conditions such as cold sores (herpes simplex), canker sores, lesions of hand-foot-mouth disease or trauma.”
Images that help to convey the variety and scope of monkeypox lesions are readily available by searching online search engines such as Google.
If an oral lesion is deemed to be suspicious the patient can be referred to primary or urgent care centers for conclusive testing, which is now widely available, said Saunders.
Testing is the first step in treating the often-painful lesions, as well as to potentially protecting a patient’s contacts via vaccination, which is increasingly becoming available.
For more information about monkepox and how to prevent transmission, visit CDC.gov.
