An interesting article titled “Children Experience Notable Number of Adverse Events During Dental Care” was presented on July 23, 2021, at the virtual session of the 2021 International Association for Dental Research (IADR)/AADR/CADR General Session written by William Nicola and et al. The research set to investigate how common adverse events are for children who receive dental care in the United States. An adverse event is an unfavorable and generally unforeseen incident caused by an error or omission during treatment that has negative consequences for health. Children are believed to suffer more commonly from adverse events than adults because they do not alwasy cooperate and they often can not sit still.
The authors had sent out an online anonymous survey to 6,327 active members of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD) in late 2019. The survey consisted of 13 questions survey that included estimated numbers for specific adverse events experienced by children within the past five years and respondent demographics. A total of 704 members of the AAPD completed the survery. Among these, 94% reported having had at least one child experience an adverse event during dental treatment within the past five years.
Approximately 82% of dentists who responded reported that the two most prevalent adverse events were self-inflicted trauma to anesthetized (numb) soft tissues after children received local anesthesia and nausea and/or vomiting. The annualized estimates of affected children were 7,816 for self-inflicted trauma to anesthetized (numb) soft tissues and 7,003 for nausea and/or vomiting. Approximately 14% of dentists who responded reported a major adverse event, such as respiratory/cardiovascular depression, neurological damage, and death. An annualized estimate for these major adverse events among children who had dental treatment was 442 affected children. Further, approximately 24% of dentists who resonded reported a medical error such as wrong tooth, wrong procedure or wrong patient. An annualized estimate for these medical errors among children who had dental treatment was 600 affected children.
The authors feel that adverse events in pedatric dentistry are very prevalent and neeeds to be addressed to make dental care safe for children and for the dentists who provide it. The risks of pediatric dental care has been covered on this site before such as in the post Is Pediatric Dental Death Avoidable? Numerous children over the years have died while having routine dental care. This study indicates that even more comman than dental deaths after pediatric dental care, is dentists treating the wrong tooth or performing a procedure that is intended for a different patient. This certainly seems an area ripe for improvement in dentistry. Dentistry must take steps to improve the quality of care that children receive.