Case Reports Serve a Place in Dentistry

An interesting article titled “CASE REPORTS HAILED” appears in JADA in September 2014, written by Enihomo Obadan, Elsbeth Kalenderian, and Rachel B. Ramoni. The article discusses an article in an earlier 2014 JADA article that featured an interesting case report. The authors state “Almost becoming a lost art in the biomedical literature, case reports still hold tremendous opportunities for learning in dentistry. In addition to the obvious learning potential for the individual dental professional, the entire professional body advances in giant strides when there is cross-organizational learning among dental clinics through information sharing.” The authors then discuss how adverse dental events being reported by dentists would help make dental treatments safer for all. The authors feels this helps promote a culture of safety, as long as there is no fear of retribution when the report occurs by the dentists. The … Read more

Lessons from Medical Litigation of Dentists

Back in June of 2013, I discussed in the post Lessons from Medical litigation in oral surgery practice several lessons that can be learned upon exploring lawsuits occurring in an oral surgery setting. An interesting post on the same topic but applied to dentists as a whole was just written earlier today in DrBicuspid, titled “When a dentist becomes the defendant,” by Meghan Guthman (October 7, 2013, source: http://www.drbicuspid.com/index.aspx?sec=sup&sub=pmt&pag=dis&ItemID=314397&wf=1660“) Apparently this article was already written in the American Student Dental Association in their summer 2013 issue and was just a reprint. The article discusses some data gathered by Medical Protective which is a malpractice insurance company. Their data shows that the average payment to a plaintiff in a dental malpractice lawsuit is $65,000. Around 20% of their dental malpractice cases between 2003 and 2012 involved a tooth extraction with the average … Read more