The Reported Facts:
It’s two for two so far for deaths after dental procedures in 2011. Another routine dental procedure ends with a dead child. On Wednesday, February 9, 2011, 17 year old, Christopher Schutzius died, of what the Medical Examiner reported as sepsis, a severe blood infection. Also referred to as blood poisoning, sepsis is very often life threatening, it causes the blood pressure to drop, the patient goes into shock, major systems shut down, such as kidneys, liver, lungs and central nervous system and then death.
On February 1, 2011 Christopher went to Dental Dreams, a corporate dental chain located in the Chicago suburb of Blue Island, Illinois. This Dental Dreams was the one located at 12200 Western Avenue. Christopher went there alone to simply have a filling refilled after he lost the previous one while eating a caramel apple. Instead of replacing the filling, the dentist gave Christopher a root canal and sent him home with no antibiotics or pain medication.
Christopher was a senior at Eisenhower High and had entered the foster case system in 2008.
Dr. Christopher Wenckus of the University of Illinois said it was very rare to die from sepsis after a root canal, going on to say it maybe happens once every 50 years. Dr. Wenckus said he would love to see the x-rays taken before the surgery.
Laying the ground work for some other problem or fault beside negligence on the part of the treating dentist and Dental Dreams, journalist Steve Metsch reports that Dr. Wenckus questioned, “Was that tooth infected prior to the root canal? If it’s a live tooth, with a functioning nerve, there’s no way in hell this takes place. Surgery can’t cause it. There’s got to be an underlying condition.”
“If someone has an infected tooth, (their face) is swollen and bad and nasty. That’s the time you use an antibiotic. How do they know the sepsis came from an infected tooth?”
According to Metsch, Dr. Wenckus went on to say if it was infection from a bad tooth there would have been warning signs such as swelling and soreness in the mouth.
“If someone has an infected tooth, …
