Horribe dental story, advice please

Zascar

A friend of mine just told me a horrible story, I thought I would post here for some comments and advice...

My friend "Mary" went to the dentist and she was told she would probably need to have her wisdom teeth out. No one likes to hear this but Mary was sh1tting it as she is not good with pain/operations or anything like that. She was due to go back in the next monday for a filling, but while she was in there the dentist suggested taking out her wisdom teeth while she was there. She was not into this at all but the dentist assured her it was a good idea. Personally I always though that you go to hospital for this procedure but no, just a local anesthetic!

Unfortunately it all went horribly wrong, one of the wisdom teeth split and left the root in there and she was unable to remove it. She told mary to come back tomorrow and she would finish the procedure. Mary was obviously in a lot of pain, but the dentist would not give Mary anything for the pain! The text day was absolutely horriffic for Mary, she was in terrible pain, puking blood and fainting form the pain. When she called the dentist she just said "Oh, your making it out to be worse than it is... you'll be fine" and was generally a compete b1tch about the situation. Mary was unable to cope so called another dentist who say her immediatly and gave her an injection of rohypnol and finished the job. He said that really Mary's wisdom teeth should not have been removed in the first place.

Mary had "The week from Hell" horribe pain and generally a terrible experience that she'd just lie to forget. However I thing she should report this dentist and possibly sue - if you go through all that, and it wasn't compeltely necessary, you should definitely be entitled to damages...

Advise appreciated.
Thanks

eth0_

There's a limit to how much anaesthetic a person can have in one day, perhaps that is why the dentist couldn't give her anything else.

Wight

You most certainly can remove Wisdom teeth without hospital admission, under local anaesthesia. I've done more than I can remember. The issue arises when wisdom teeth are impacted, or "stuck" half-way up if you like. Then the issue becomes one of degrees. Mild impaction can be treated in a regular practice setting. As the level of complication increases the tooth becomes more of a candidate for specialist referral.

The decison to refer or not is definitely a judgement call. In this case the tooth may have appeared fine on assessment in the mouth and x-ray. Teeth break all the time. Sometimes what seems to be the simplest of extractions on the surface (not even including wisdom teeth) can suddenly become a huge task because the tooth fractures, and there's no way of predicting this outcome. The original dentist may quite correctly have felt a full surgical approach was required, which takes time, and thus wanted to complete the procedure the next day while not under pressure. (This is not something you want to attempt as a Dentist while under time pressure!)

I would perhaps question any opinion that "the tooth shouldn't have been extracted" based on only a root present. While this may have been the case I'd certainly want to see x-rays of the tooth before ANY treatment was carried out to form an opinion as to the justification of an extraction. There are multiple reasons why you may wish to remove a wisdom tooth. If only a root is present you have absolutley no way of assessing most of these.

I'm sorry your friend felt she was poorly treated afterwards on the phone etc. Any patient who's had a tough time of it deserves a sympathetic hearing at the very least.