Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter 

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

A 42-year-old woman has re­ject­ed an of­fer of $75,000 in com­pen­sa­tion for a botched den­tal pro­ce­dure that left her in emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal pain and with a ten-inch scar on her ab­domen.

Dur­ing what was sup­posed to be a rou­tine tooth ex­trac­tion, a met­al tool slipped down her throat, re­sult­ing in her hav­ing to un­der­go surgery to re­move it.

The moth­er of two is now push­ing ahead with le­gal ac­tion in the High Court, through her at­tor­neys Chris­t­ian Deena and Ramesh Deena, in­struct­ed by Ri­an­na Har­ry of Tri­Law Cham­ber.

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, the woman said she still suf­fered dai­ly from phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al pain. She said she was forced to close down her food busi­ness and was now de­pen­dent on her hus­band, who is a jan­i­tor. She ex­pe­ri­ences post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der, de­pres­sion, sui­ci­dal ideation and sleep­less nights due to night­mares. 

“They of­fered a no-claim set­tle­ment of $75,000, which out­right we re­ject­ed with the guid­ance of my lawyer. I still have cramps and pain. I’m still on bed rest. I am not func­tion­ing 100 per cent yet and still on med­ica­tion.”

Ac­cord­ing to a pre-ac­tion let­ter on Oc­to­ber 3, 2024, dur­ing a pro­ce­dure to re­move her low­er mo­lar tooth on Au­gust 17, a three-cen­time­tre den­tal bur be­came loose from the den­tal hand­piece, went to the back of her tongue, and then slipped down her throat.

A den­tal bur is a small met­al at­tach­ment to a den­tal hand­piece, com­mon­ly used by den­tists for den­tal pro­ce­dures. 

The woman was tak­en to the Point Fortin Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where it was re­vealed that the tool had now trav­elled to the epi­gas­tric re­gion. On Au­gust 19, she was in­formed that the den­tal bur had trav­elled fur­ther down her di­ges­tive tract. 

She was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing vom­it­ing episodes and ten­der­ness. Lat­er that day, an ex­plorato­ry la­paro­to­my pro­ce­dure was con­duct­ed at the hos­pi­tal where­by a bow­el re­sec­tion was done to re­move the den­tal bur. In the pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter, her at­tor­neys stat­ed that she was see­ing a cer­ti­fied psy­chi­a­trist and she could no longer en­joy fam­i­ly and out­door ac­tiv­i­ties or per­form dai­ly house­hold tasks.

She is seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion from the den­tists for med­ical ex­pens­es, per­son­al in­jury, loss and ex­pense caused by their neg­li­gence, loss of prof­it or earn­ings, fu­ture med­ical ex­pens­es, in­ter­ests and her le­gal costs.