Although a substantial number of malpractice cases involve medical errors in a dentist’s office, dental malpractice is an area where there are a lot of misconceptions and unique challenges. Recent reports show that Wyoming has one of the highest rates of dental malpractice in the nation. So, there may be very good reasons why people are afraid to go to the dentist.
Dental treatment is unpleasant even at the best of times. If your dentist makes a mistake, the results can not only be extremely painful, but catastrophic for your health, disfiguring to your appearance, and traumatic for your mental and emotional wellbeing.
At Ragain & Clark, we have decades of experience helping patients recover after all types of medical mistakes, including dental malpractice. We’ve seen the devastation it can cause, and we know how hard it can be to fight the medical corporations, insurance companies, and specialized legal teams that routinely work to deny wrongdoing and prevent injured patients from receiving the assistance they deserve. Here are some issues that are often overlooked, and information about how to protect your health and legal rights if you’ve been subjected to medical negligence at the dentist’s office.
What is Dental Malpractice?
It can be painful and disturbing just to get your teeth examined and cleaned. When a dentist needs to do something more, such as fill a cavity or pull a tooth, your mouth can be swollen and sore for days during a normal recovery process. So how can you tell if something’s gone wrong? How would you know if the dentist made a mistake?
Dental malpractice is defined as a situation where dental professionals fail to follow reasonable standards of care when treating a patient, and that failure harms the patient. The failure could be:
- Not doing something that should have been done
- Doing something incorrectly
- Doing something that shouldn’t have been done
- A combination of these
These types of mistakes can have far-reaching effects, so it is important to be alert for signs of dental malpractice and take steps to protect yourself if you suspect you may have been a victim.
The Standard of Care Your Dentist’s Office is Required to Follow
In any type of medical malpractice case, a patient who has been injured has to prove several elements before they can recover any compensation to cover their additional medical costs and offset the pain and suffering they’ve endured. Injured patients must establish what the standard of care should have been under the circumstances they were in when they were treated. They must demonstrate how the healthcare provided fell short of that standard. And they must show how the failure to adhere to standards caused them harm.
No healthcare provider is going to freely admit that they’ve made a mistake or gotten sloppy with procedures, so patients need to engage in extensive investigation to determine what should have happened, what actually happened, and how it caused injuries. This can be extremely difficult, which is why victims of medical errors rely on experienced legal teams for assistance in these cases.
Dental Malpractice Can Involve Many Different Types of Errors
Dentists and other dental professionals have been known to make many different types of mistakes. Sometimes, they are in a hurry and don’t pay attention to what they’re doing. Dental practices often operate more like factories than anything else, trying to complete as many procedures as possible during the open hours of operation.
Other times, dental errors occur because professionals allow themselves to get distracted by personal concerns. In some cases, mistakes can be traced to improper training, failure to stay up-to-date with professional standards, or not reviewing a patient’s records before starting treatment. It is impossible to cover every potential form of dental malpractice in a general article like this, but here we review some of the more common problems that we’ve seen.
Failure to Diagnose a Condition
Dentists are responsible for the health of more than just teeth. They are expected to conduct a thorough exam of a patient’s mouth to look for signs of decay, disease, and other problems. This includes oral cancer. When a dentist fails to notice a potentially damaging condition, the condition can continue to progress untreated, causing serious consequences for the patient. Oral cancer can grow and spread to other tissues. A patient afflicted with a temporomandibular joint disorder (TMJ) can suffer additional pain and dysfunction as the condition worsens. Damage to teeth and gums can become difficult, if not impossible, to correct if the condition goes untreated for too long.
While delayed and missed diagnoses are often the reason a serious condition is not treated in a timely fashion, sometimes a professional notices the symptoms but fails to order follow-up tests to confirm the need for treatment, or fails to realize the severity of the problem. In addition, injuries also occur when a patient complains of pain or another problem after treatment and the dentist refuses to take the concerns seriously. Infections and other complications are ignored and allowed to grow worse.
Mistakes During Procedures
Many dental procedures are extremely delicate and require careful attention to detail. If a dentist or assistant tries to perform while tired or distracted or under the influence of a substance that affects their ability, they can damage nerves, blood vessels, teeth, and other parts of the mouth, often leading to significant permanent damage.
Improper Hygiene and Lack of Proper Infection Control
Dental practices are required by law to maintain certain standards to prevent the spread of infection. When someone in the office fails to take proper measures to control the environment and prevent infection, patients can suffer infections and other severe consequences.
Prescription Mistakes
Before, during, and after dental procedures, many patients require medication to control pain or prevent infection. Patients can be prescribed medication that is wrong for the needs of the situation or that interacts with other substances they take or poses harm due to their medical condition. Medications might also be administered in a dosage that is too high and causes complications or that is too low to meet the patient’s needs.
In particular, mistakes with anesthesia can prove particularly dangerous.
Failure to Refer to a Specialist
Many dental problems require treatment that a standard dental office is not equipped to provide. When dentists attempt to treat conditions that are beyond their level of expertise, they can cause harm and prevent the patient from receiving the appropriate level of care in a timely fashion, allowing their condition to worsen.
Not Obtaining Informed Consent
Many dental treatments pose a risk of complications and side effects. Patients should be made aware of the risks and effects. Then they should be required to give affirmative consent before a procedure is performed or be given the opportunity to decline treatment. In many cases, dentists fail to inform patients of the risks and problems until it is too late.
Dental Malpractice Can Have a Serious Impact on a Patient’s Overall Health
Dental malpractice generally causes excessive pain and frequently leads to unnecessary tooth loss and disfigurement. Patients suffering due to dental mistakes usually require additional procedures, and sometimes, even with extensive treatment, the damage cannot be repaired.
The injuries are not limited to a patient’s mouth. Victims of dental malpractice can suffer harm to their overall physical and mental health. Problems can include:
- Systemic infections. If bacteria enter the bloodstream through the mouth, it can infect organs throughout the body, such as the brain, heart, and kidneys, potentially leading to wrongful death
- Nutritional deficiencies. When oral pain or missing teeth make it difficult to eat, patients often reduce their intake of healthful food. They suffer from poor nutrition, weakness, and a damaged immune system.
- Chronic pain. Damage caused by dental malpractice can lead to persistent pain that prevents a patient from sleeping, speaking, and concentrating, making it impossible to function normally and drastically reducing the quality of life.
- Psychological damage. Pain and disfigurement caused by dental malpractice can damage self-esteem and lead to depression and social isolation.
Even when the initial dental errors can be repaired, other harm caused to the patient’s life may be impossible to reverse.
Financial Ramifications
Dental mistakes can have significant financial consequences. In addition to the cost of further treatment to correct errors and complications, patients often suffer severe setbacks in employment. They miss significant time from work due to procedures and recovery, and the difficulties with communication due to oral problems can cause them to lose confidence in their ability to perform their jobs. Damage to a career can be permanent, reducing earning capacity for the foreseeable future.
Legally, patients impacted by dental malpractice should be eligible to receive compensation not only for these economic losses but also for the pain, suffering, and emotional anguish they’ve endured.
Trust Ragain & Clark to Stand Up for Your Rights if You’ve Been Harmed by Dental Malpractice
Like all medical professionals, dentists and their staff have an obligation to treat patients according to the reasonable standards of their profession. When they fail to live up to those standards and their sloppy behavior causes harm, a Wyoming dental malpractice attorney at Ragain & Clark can work to ensure that they are held accountable.
Most providers carry malpractice insurance that is designed to cover a patient’s losses in this type of situation, but insurance companies fight vigorously to downplay the seriousness of injuries and deny liability for malpractice. We know how to overcome their tactics. While we often succeed in winning our clients’ objectives through a negotiated settlement, we are always laying the groundwork to succeed in court, and we have the skills, dedication, and experience to win when it comes to litigation.
If you’ve been harmed due to mistakes in a dentist’s office or any place where you were treated negligently, call us at 307-388-6400 or contact us online for a free consultation to learn more about the ways we can assist.
