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Dental Malpractice
As with any healthcare provider, dentists must use a professional standard of care when working in and around a person's mouth. Teeth cleaning and repair requires the use of precise diamond-tipped instruments in very sensitive areas of the mouth. However, dentists have made the voluntary choice to go through years of training in order to help people and their teeth. Therefore, they have a legal duty to their patients to concentrate on what they are doing at all times. One small slip of the wrist could spell disaster.
For example, an Illinois woman sued her dentist for a botched root canal, where it is alleged the dentist left some of the root in. This led to infection, which forced her to get a dental implant to replace the tooth. Her lawsuit sought recovery for her pain and suffering, dental expenses, lost wages, and attorney fees.
In dental malpractice, there needs to be an actual injury that causes long-term pain. The pain associated with a root canal is usually not enough to sue over. It is usually pain from the infected root that brings the patient in to the dentist’s office to begin with. A normal amount of pain, such as when the anesthetic needle penetrates the gum, is an unavoidable element of a root canal. In a normal root canal, the dentist does not do anything wrong.
Lawsuits involving dental malpractice usually lead to smaller recoveries compared to other medical malpractice claims. This is because there is generally less that can go fatally wrong in a dental procedure. However, people do die from dental procedures, mainly through mistakes in administering anesthesia. Anesthesiology is a difficult area of medicine; there can be allergic and unanticipated reactions. A dentist needs to thoroughly check the patient’s background before initiating any dental surgery.
Other grounds for dental malpractice can include the use of defective dental products, improper sterilization of utensils, or injury to the bone and tissue of the oral cavity.
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