Personal Injury Law

Woman Dies in Dentist Chair

By Steve Klearman

Last week Georgette Watson, principal of Brentano Math and Science Academy in Chicago, died while undergoing a root canal in her dentist's chair. It wasn't the physical surgery that killed her, however. The blame is being placed upon her anesthesia, which put her in a state between unconsciousness and being awake, a state known as "twilight sedation." In this condition patients are typically groggy though they can talk and are aware of their surroundings.

There are about 17 million root canals performed in the United States every year, but resulting deaths due to anesthesia are relatively rare. "I would think that she had to have some kind of underlying health problem," said Dr. Christopher Wenckus, chief of the department of endodontics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "Healthy people just don't die from heart attacks." Unfortunately, in this case her exact condition is unclear because the autopsy report came back inconclusive, pending further investigation by Illinois state medical examiners.

Full post as published by Reno Personal Injury Lawyer on January 02, 2008 (boomark / email).