Posted on 07/20/2006 5:29:24 PM PDT by Battle Axe
Are there any Freepers with like experiences of a loved one dying from having their teeth removed?
There are ads on the radio for sedation dentistry, an IV, that will put you completely out. However, before this is done in a regular surgery, the physicians make sure you have no pre-existing conditions.
Apparently not so with dentistry.
Here's what happened.
My Dad's fishing partner.....yes he was almost 91....was in good health except for a cracked tooth. It was infected and the dentist wanted to pull it and all his other upper teeth and give him dentures. (He was well heeled and had great insurance.) The daughter wanted to wait until after the granddaughter's wedding, but the oral surgeon assured the family that he would be fine.
He was not. He went downhill from about the 3rd day on. Finally he went a bit crazy and took his own life. The daughter had taken him back to the dentist, to the doctor and to the VA hospital. All they could find was a sodium imbalance. He was treated for that with an IV and did feel a little better. The VA told him to come back in 2 weeks. But he took his own life before the two weeks went by.
Because of his age, I think they just blew him off.
Before this dentistry, this man would walk 5 miles and was still driving 40 miles to get groceries.....we live in this God forsaken, out in the boondocks, can't get there from here place. Yes it is 40 miles to the store.
The family is just devastated as two of the children found him.
What does anyone else know about this type of sedation? There were no tests performed to see if he would or could tolerate this type of sedation.
Wow, I never heard of this. I had sedation dentistry to remove wisdom teeth and woke up just fine.
Freeper needs help with sedation dentistry
To answer your question, yes! it's ok to do shots of "151" before having this procedure.
My uncle has a pacemaker. You would not believe the tests and red tape he had to go through to get a mole removed, including two different stress tests, a whole series of blood tests.
Sorry for their loss. If it's not one thing it's another.
You are probably not almost 91.
The real question is why didn't the dentist check him out further due to his age? I know he looked and acted like a kid. He could out fish me and his daughter put together.
He was not the least bit overweight. He got up at 5 a.m. and ate an orange and a grapefruit. He looked 75 or less.
Thanks for your comments. No one ever expected this, but I guess no one ever does.
I talked to someone on the plane on the way back from the funeral. He was a social worker and said that the fastest growing group of suicidal souls are the elderly.
Sorry to hear about your friend, Battle Axe. Mr. VITW gets his dental with the VA, they are pretty thorough going over all his pre-existings. Prayers being said for his family.
I am sure we have some physicians here who can help you out.
I do know that the elderly are very vulnerable to electrolyte imbalances. My grandmother was hospitalized for over a week while they got her back in balance.
She always drank a great deal of water and tended to avoid salt (she said it burned her mouth) and because of her grief over the loss of her husband she was not eating hardly at all. The combination affected her grasp on reality which was why she was checked in to the hospital were they found the problem.
I don't know but if he was not eating because of the pain in his mouth and was drinking lots of fluids the same thing could have happened to your dad's friend.
A single IV would not have necessarily cleared the problem up.
I'm surprised that the dentist did not,at the very least,require a letter from his primary care physician clearing him for a tooth extraction.
Some people with a story like yours might be inclined to consult a malpractice lawyer.
Had a number of doctors try to do this to my grandfather not long ago.
This is so terribly sad. I don't know what the protocol would be for sedating a 91 year old man, but I do know that even my healthy, relatively young dog has a screen (BUN counts etc) before my vet puts him under. It almost seems inconceivable that your Dad's friend would be put under full sedation at that age without a full work-up.So many things can go wrong. Do know what sedative was used?
No, don't know what one. Will find out.
The reason I ask is I recall reading that there are some sedative agents that have been known to cause psychosis in some patients, just can't recall what. If you can find out exactly what he was given, by all means google it.
Thanks so very much for that info. That may be the problem.
I've also heard that a sodium imbalance can also create similar problems.
Sorry for your loss. Here are some links from PubMed that may get you started
Major morbidity or mortality from office anesthetic procedures: a closed-claim analysis of 13 cases
" The disproportionate number of patients in this sample who were at the extremes of age and with ASA classifications below I suggests that anesthesia risk may be significantly increased in patients who fall outside the healthy, young adult category typically treated in the oral surgical/dental outpatient setting."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?itool=abstractplus&db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=abstractplus&list_uids=1839816
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