Atlanta Injury Lawyers Blog

No Atlanta dental malpractice lawyer would doubt that modern sedation techniques are safer and more effective than ever before. Yet, every year there are far too many cases involving patients developing serious or even fatal complications after being administering anesthesia. According to a new article in Anesthesia Progress, the risks are especially great when patients have existing medical conditions.

Before performing a dental procedure on a person with a pre-existing medical condition, Atlanta dentists must evaluate the patient’s eligibility for anesthesia. A dentist who is treating a patient suffering from cardiovascular disease, must have a complete review of the patient’s medical history. This must be followed by a physical examination, including a recording of the blood pressure and heart rate. In addition, it is now required by the standard of care to record capnography to ensure patient safety while under general anesthesia.

After this, the dentist must make an informed decision about whether the patient is eligible for a procedure. The researchers advise dentists to refer the patient back to a physician, if they have any doubts about the patient’s eligibility for the procedure, even if that means delaying the procedure. Once the anesthesia is administered, any significant changes in blood pressure readings must be monitored closely.
Continue reading

The family of a four-year-old boy in California, who died after a dental procedure, is still looking for answers about the reasons for his death. The boy had been taken to a dentist in Oakland, for tooth extractions and dental capping. He was administered a dental anesthetic. However, things worsened rapidly from then on. The boy slipped into unconsciousness, and despite efforts to revive him, died.

The boy had been born with a cardiac defect, involving a hole in the wall separating the right and left ventricle of the heart. When he was about a year old, he had a pacemaker installed. According to his family, he was in good health after he had the pacemaker installed.

The family says that the doctors at the hospital where the dental procedure was performed were aware of the boy’s medical history, because it was the same hospital where he has had his open-heart surgery. Every six months, he visited the hospital for a cardiac checkup.
Continue reading

The family of a thirteen-year-old girl who died while she was undergoing dental surgery, has reportedly settled a wrongful death lawsuit for $1 million.

The incident occurred at a dental office on December 21, 2010, when the thirteen-year-old was undergoing surgery. The girl had been administered general anesthesia, and during the surgery, suddenly stopped breathing. She died soon after.

Autopsies later confirmed that the death was the result of complications arising from anesthesia use. The girl suffered diffuse hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy from respiratory arrest brought on by anesthesia complications.

Her parents filed a lawsuit against the 81 year-old dentist. The case has now settled and the lawsuit dismissed in exchange for $1 million. The settlement was brought about through the help of the State Dental Board which negotiated between the parties and approved the final settlement. The settlement will be shared by the parents of the girl.
Continue reading

As an Atlanta dental malpractice lawyer, I come across cases involving negligence by dental professionals every day. In many of these cases, patients might have been able to avoid the trauma of a dental injury if they had been aware of some of the warning signs of a negligent professional.

According to MNN.com, there are certain signs that should alert you to the possibility that your dentist may not be as professional as he or she needs to be. Your dentist should take a complete medical history before he or she decides to recommend a treatment. Oral treatments are no laughing matter. Some oral conditions can affect a person’s cardiac health, while certain medical conditions like arthritis, can affect a person’s dental health. A complete medical history can inform your dentist about a condition that could impact the success of the procedure or treatment. For instance, many people with heart problems should not be given injections containing epinephrine. Still others, who have certain pre-existing health conditions must be given a course of antibiotics prior to dental treatment being administered.
Continue reading

Injury to the lingual nerve (LN) is a common result from Dental Malpractice. A number of oral and maxillofacial surgical procedures result in damage to the Trigeminal Nerve, Lingual Nerve or Inferior Alveolar Nerve. The most common signs or symptoms of dental nerve damage is numbness (about half) followed by numbness with pain (about 40%). Other signs of dental nerve injury are hyper-sensitivity to stimulation, a crawling feeling in the lip or chin area, burning, stinging or other altered sensation to the lip, chin and gums (for inferior alveolar nerve injuries) and a change in taste,  a heavy-feeling tongue coupled with difficulties talking as normal, and/or a lack of appetite. Still other changed sensations following dental nerve injury include shooting pains in your mouth, the feeling that your tongue is burning, aching, extreme sensitivity and pain when exposed to cold, an inability to taste foods and a “pins and needles” feeling when eating.

Just like other nerve injuries, dental nerve injuries are classified by the degree of injury. The timing and success of the nerve repair depends on the extent of injury. Clinically useful injury grading systems have been developed that allow correlation of the microscopic changes occurring after nerve injury and patient symptoms. Perhaps the most widely accepted are those developed by Seddon and Sunderland.  Seddon divided nerve injuries by severity into three broad categories: neurapraxia, axonotmesis, and neurotmesis. Neurapraxia, the mildest injury type, does not involve loss of nerve continuity and causes functional loss, which is transient. This symptom’s transience it thought to be due to a local ion-induced conduction block at the injury site, although subtle alterations in myelin structure have also been found. Axonotmesis occurs when there is complete interruption of the nerve axon and surrounding myelin while the surrounding mesenchymal structures including the perineurium and epineurium, are preserved. Axon and myelin degeneration occur distal to the point of injury, causing complete denervation. The prospect of recovery is excellent in such injuries because of the remaining uninjured mesenchymal latticework that provides a path for subsequent sprouting axons to reinnervate their target organ. Neurotmesis involves disconnection of a nerve. Functional loss is complete and recovery without surgical intervention, does not usually occur because of scar formation and the loss of the mesenchymal guide that properly directs axonal re-growth.

Sunderland’s classification system further stratifies the three injury types described by Seddon into five categories according to severity. A first-degree injury is equivalent to Seddon’s neurapraxia and a second-degree injury is equivalent to axonotmesis. Third-degree nerve injuries occur when there is disruption of the axon (axonotmesis) and also partial injury to the endoneurium. This categorization places a third-degree between Seddon’s axonotmesis and neurotmesis. Dependent on the extent of the endoneurial damage, functional recovery may be possible. Sunderland divides Seddon’s neurotmesis into fourth and fifth degrees. In a fourth-degree injury, all portions of the nerve are disrupted except the epineurium. Recovery is not possible without surgical intervention. Similarly, a fifth-degree injury involves complete severance of the nerve.

If you have suffered from a dental nerve injury, it is important to seek medical intervention as soon as possible. The longer your symptoms last, the less likely it is that you will regain full sensation in the affected areas of your mouth. Regardless of what you have been told, there are courses of treatment that can help you regain the feeling in your mouth, tongue, cheek and gums.
Continue reading

Atlanta dental malpractice lawyers have found the failure of the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) to warn the public adequately about the dangers of mercury dental fillings or amalgam fillings, perplexing. The calls for the agency to limit the use of mercury fillings, or warn the public about the risks of these fillings, are getting louder. While it is not clear whether these fillings are, in fact, causing the problems that some  researchers and activists are attributing to them, I think the best course of action is to inform the public of what information and evidence is out there and let each person decide for themselves what course of action they want to take with the filling that they get.

This month, dentists, consumers and health care experts are calling on the agency to warn consumers about the risks of these fillings. Among the people adding their voices to these calls is a woman, who alleges that her children were severely harmed by the mercury fillings that were inserted into her teeth during her pregnancies.

It’s not as if scientists, environmental groups and health experts do not agree on the risks to human health from mercury exposure. There is an almost unanimous opinion that exposure to mercury damages human health and risks the environment. However, in spite of this evidence, the Food and Drug Administration has been painfully slow to act on the matter.
Continue reading