DALLAS (AP) - A newspaper's investigation has found that at least 85 dental patients have died in Texas since 2010, and the number of similar deaths nationwide is likely much higher.
The Dallas Morning News (http://bit.ly/1Y4OazH ) listed several potential risks of bad dental care, including oversedation, inhaling objects, bleeding and facial fires. Other concerns included monitoring and emergency-response failures, accidental or deliberate violence, unsterilized equipment and intoxicated dentists.
Texas is the only state in the nation that both requires dentists to report all deaths that might be treatment-related and produces a detailed accounting of those reports, the paper found. It said many states refused to release death reports that dentists have submitted, making it impossible to have a complete picture of why patients die and how many cases are related to treatment errors.
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Information from: The Dallas Morning News, http://www.dallasnews.com
