1
Medicine & Health / Re: Medical Error: The Third Leading Cause of Death in the US
« on: December 07, 2019, 10:31:44 AM »What I'd like to know is.....
Eddie, has anyone croaked in your office
No but I have had a couple patients have severe seizures. It happened in a cluster, same year, after 20 plus years of no issues at all. I was afraid one of them would die.I had her on the monitor and her heart rate are was well over 250/bpm.
I work in the operating room too, as you probably remember. I have seen many serious emergencies with kids under general anesthesia, but all of them were handled with great expertise by the docs I work with. My favorite anesthesiologist was a woman.....very gifted and cool under pressure. She got cancer a few years back and slipped away while I wasn't paying attention. I miss her.
I had one kid who died a few days after I did some very minor work on him in the hospital. He was in foster care, so an autopsy was mandatory. The forensic pathologist was never able to determine the cause of death. AFAIK, there will never be a way for me to know whether me putting the kid to sleep to fix his teeth had anything to do with it.
We are required to have a defibrillator now, but I've never had to use mine, Hope I never do.
The typical dental office death is a random heart attack of an older person who has it while getting routine work. That isn't usually anyone's fault.
Pediatric dentists (I am one) as a group.....have killed lots of healthy kids by mismanaging sedations in the office without the right staff training, doctor training, proper protocol, etc. It still happens.
You have to understand though, that pediatric dentists are under a lot of pressure to provide this kind of treatment. Medicaid, for instance, will not pay for general anesthesia in the hospital unless you have tried to do it in office with sedation first and had a "failed sedation". This is extremely stupid policy. and it's all about money.