oral surgeon

North Carolina Oral Surgeon Loses License Forever After Death of Patient who Received Dental Implants

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An oral surgeon in North Carolina was forced to give up his license in August 2021. The reason was due to an order signed by the North Carolina State Board of Dental Examiners that was the result of an investigation of a patient the oral surgeon had treated for dental implants who died as a result of the treatment. The patient that died was a 53 year old cardiologist in North Carolina. The oral surgeon had had his license for roughly 20 years when he had to give it up. On July 30, 2020, the oral surgeon administered anesthesia and sedatives to the cardiolgist for dental implant placement. Close to the end of the surgery, the cardiologist’s oxygen saturation and heart rate dropped to life threatening levels. The oral surgeon attempted ventilation, by trying to intubate the patient with an … Read more

Has the FDA Warning for Children Under Three Affected General Anesthesia Use in Dentistry?

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An interesting article titled “Prolonged General Anesthesia in a Pediatric Population” was presented on July 21, 2021, at the virtual session of the 2021 International Association for Dental Research (IADR)/AADR/CADR General Session written by Mary Younan and et al. The research sets to investigate if use of prolonged general anesthesia amongst pediatric dental patients has changed since 2016 when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) came out with guidance that said 3 or more hours of anesthetic exposure, may be a risk factor for cognitive defects, particularly for pediatric patients under 3 years of age. The researchers attempeted to see if a difference exists in the proportion of pediatric dental cases with general anesthesia time 180 minutes pre-FDA to post-FDA warning and to use a root cause analysis to identify factors that contribute to prolonged general anestehsia exposure of children … Read more

Assessing the Impact of Three Day Opioids Limits for Dentists

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An interesting article titled “Opioid Formulary Edit’s Impact on Commercial Dental Prescribers” 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 David Hamlin and et al. The research set to investigate the impact the insurance company Cigna had when it implemented its three-day quantity limit on dental opioid prescriptions. Insurance companies limiting new opioid prescriptions for dentists to three days (or another time duration) has been discussed on this site before in the post Insurance Companies Limiting Access to Opioids After Wisdom Teeth Surgery. The authors speculated that by limiting opioid prescriptions to three day there would be year-over-year reductions in prescriptions greater than three days and reductions in the average total metric quantity per prescription. In the study, the authors looked at the claims of … Read more

Combining ibuprofen and acetaminophen for wisdom teeth surgery pain management

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Before on this site the hazards of opioids prescribed for surgeries like wisdom teeth extraction has been discussed. Instead of taking an opioid like Vicodin which contains hydrocodone or another opioid that contains oxycodone an alternative patients may have if their oral surgeon is willing is to take a combination of ibuprofen and acetaminophen. This combination has been discussed in many articles on the past on this site such as Reducing Opioids in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, New Research Being Conducted at Rutgers for Opioid Alternatives Could Lead to Less Potential Drug Abuse for those Having Wisdom Teeth Surgery, and Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons Current Perspectives on Opioid Prescribing. Patients may have questions about the right dosage level, there side effects, and if they work as well as opioids. According to a white paper by the American Association of Oral … Read more

Using Bupivacaine with Wisdom Teeth Removal Results in Less Opioids Prescribed

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An interesting article titled “A Retrospective Cross-Sectional Study of the Effect of Liposomal Bupivacaine on Postoperative Opioid Prescribing After Third Molar Extraction,” written by Stuart E. Lieblich and et al. appears in the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (vol. 79, pp. 1401-1408, 2021). The study seeks to explore if patients who have lower wisdom teeth removed using liposomal bupivacaine need less opioids than those wo do not have liposomal bupivacaine. In the study the authors performed a retrospective study of patients who had undergone wisdom teeth extraction at 2 outpatient oral surgery centers in the United States. Patients had to have been at least 18 years of age and undergoing an elective wisdom tooth removal with 1 partial bony or full bony lower impacted wisdom tooth. A total of 600 patients who underwent wisdom teeth extracted were included in … Read more