One of my family members was diagnosed with gum disease, and the dentist still pulled a dozen teeth. The dentist sent them home with a 6-inch packet of gauze and told them to change the gauze every 45 minutes. The problem was, they didn't stop bleeding. They lost 2-3 pints of blood (not an over dramatic statement - I witnessed it in person and they did lose around that much). We couldn't get the bleeding to stop, and I ended up driving them to the ER.
I had no idea abou teabags stopping bleeding - which is what the ER staff spent 2 hours with teabags, trying to do. Finally, they were able to stop the bleeding. The dentist, staff and paperwork given to them did not say anything about using teabags or any other means other than "change the gauze every 45 minutes" to stop the bleeding. The dentist sent her out of the office with gauze packed on the gums, bleeding everywhere and through the gauze. Well, with that many extraction sites, you can't possibly change them all at once. You pull one out, it starts bleeding and gets everything else in the mouth bloody, before you even get that one in. They were admitted to the hospital and stayed a little over a day. A couple of days afterwards, another "emergency dentist" that we found prescribed them some antibiotics for their gums - something not given by the previous dentist.
I got in touch with their area and regional manager, and eventually the Dental Director, who agreed to pay all bills related to this incident. While he has refused to admit that the dentist "did anything wrong"...he said they will pay all related hospital, doctor and other dental bills related to the situation (right now it's looking at about $ 5K to $ 8K). We are unable to sue them because it seems that laws passed a while back are more in favor of crooked dentists than of the patients, from what a lawyer explained to me. But being that the Dental Director is so "willing" to pay for all of this, one can't help but to see that they must be trying to cover up something. The regional manager told me that "they would be issuing write-ups to employees and re-training". Obviously that didn't do a freaking thing for my family member. Also, a laywer would cost much more after paying them out of anything that we would win from a lawsuit. "Negligence" cases do not seem to go very far nowadays. Though I can't help but ask myself what kind of an idiot would pull a dozen all at once time, knowing that they diagnosed a patient with gum disease and that it would likely cause excessive bleeding more than that of a normal gum?
Yes, the family member is at fault for not taking care of their teeth. Yes, they did go to the dentist to try to do what they could for that issue. However...should a person bleed to death because they went to a dentist, or because they didn't take care of their teeth? People go to dentists all the time for cavities...that's a result of failing to take care of their teeth. Dentists go to dentists to get their own cavities filled, false teeth, etc. So...why are dentists so crazy about yanking out as many teeth as they can from people?
Eng Hin - They are otherwise healthy and have never had any high blood pressure problems or blood clotting problems. They have a normal clotting time.
C
I've had my own problems with bad dentists. I also found it was impossible to sue. You are lucky that they are paying for the hospital bill. My dentist did not agree to pay for anything after he gave me a mouth full of acrylic that he knew I was allergic to. It has cost me over $ 20,000 and I still need $ 5000 more in work.
Eng Hin
I have also pulled out a lot of teeth from a single patient with gum disease but not up to 1 dozen. And yes the gum can bleed quite a bit, but bleeding after tooth extraction often happen not because of the number of teeth being pulled. Rather, the more important factors are the patients blood pressure at the time of extraction, for those with hypertension tend to bleed a lot even after a single tooth extraction. Another factor is the patients bleeding time or the clotting factor, which will influence the amount of post extraction bleeding. Otherwise, from experience, teeth involved in gum disease which needs extraction often cause very minimal bleeding if the patient is healthy.
Orignal From: Why do dentists reason that they should pull so many teeth at once on sensitive patients?
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