Six-year-old Caleb Sears died after having a tooth pulled at the dentist. His dentist was performing double duty -- pulling the tooth while also administering general anesthesia
“Once we had the information about his brain and consulted with the neurologist, we realizbaned that we had to let him go,” said Eliza Sears, Caleb’s mom.
We wanted to know how many other kids had died after a dental procedure involving anesthesia. The answer was hard to get.
The Dental Board of California, whose goal is to protect the health and safety of consumers, couldn’t tell us how many kids have died. Instead, it gave us a stack of inconsistent and heavily redacted reports submitted by dentists after a procedure had gone wrong. We couldn’t make sense of most of it.
Soon after that, the legislature stepped in, and ordered the board to study the safety of dentists giving kids anesthesia.
“I kept thinking, I wish someone had done this years ago, to save Caleb,” Stears said.
Many medical experts say it’s unsafe for dentists to administer anesthesia in kids while also doing dental work. They’ve attended dental board meetings over the past several months, asking the board to ban the practice.
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“I implore you, as I have before, do not allow a child to be treated by the same person for anesthesia and whatever surgical treatment there is to be done,” dental professor Larry Trapp told the board.
But the board hasn’t been willing to go that far.
“The single operator anesthesia model is accepted nowhere in medicine, but exists only in dentistry,” Paula Whiteman, representing the American Academy of Pediatrics of California, told the board. “Despite the fact that this is my fourth time in front of the California Dental Board, the committee has ignored our recommendations.”
But, in an unexpected move, the board’s president said changes to how general anesthesia is given to kids needs to happen.
“I’m concerned that our recommendations at this point do not reflect the concerns that I’ve heard,” said Steven Morrow, board president.
The board is now recommending that dentists no longer administer general anesthesia while also performing dental work in children under the age of seven. A separate anesthesiologist would be required.
Medical experts call this a move in the right direction.
“Children ages seven and up are just as important as seven and below,” Whiteman said. “But this is a start. It gets our foot in the door. We’ll take this win.”
The board will now submit this new recommendation to the legislature. NBC Bay Area will continue to follow this story.
