I read with some disappointment the May JADA article by Mr. Peter Sfikas, the ADA chief counsel, "Statute of limitations precludes dental malpractice claim" (
JADA 2006;137:668–9
). The history of this case gives an excellent opportunity to discuss appropriate and ethical follow-up for a patient with numbness and pain after third-molar extraction. This was not done. Instead, the article implies that if a patient doesn’t sue you by the time the statute of limitations runs out, one has acted in an appropriate manner.
Injury to the inferior alveolar nerve is a known consequence of wisdom-tooth extraction. Any practitioner who is going to perform wisdom-tooth extraction needs to obtain appropriate informed consent. If pain and, especially, postoperative numbness occur, the patient needs to be followed until the numbness resolves. If the numbness does not resolve in an appropriate amount of time (three months), then referral to a specialist is necessary to ensure the best outcome for the patient.
None of this was done in the case cited. If it had been, I think litigation, with all the emotional and financial cost involved, could have been avoided. This is the message our membership should have gotten from the article.
