The four-year-old girl, hospitalized since last Thursday in the pediatric intensive care unit of the Clínico Hospital of Valencia, after having undergone treatment at a dental clinic in Alzira (Valencia), is improving favorably and has been transferred to the department, as sources from the Ministry of Health report to this newspaper. The minor underwent dental treatment at the same private clinic where another six-year-old girl, who died a few hours after the procedure, had also been treated on the same day.
The four-year-old girl went to the emergency room of Ribera hospital at 3.11pm. last Thursday, after being treated at the dental clinic, with an episode of fever, vomiting and drowsiness, she was transferred to the Clínico de València hospital, where she is still hospitalized.
At 4.52pm on the same day, another six-year-old girl was admitted to the emergency room of the same hospital in cardiorespiratory arrest after being treated that same morning at the same private dental clinic and doctors attempted to resuscitate her without success. This minor had very similar symptoms to the previous one, including breathing difficulties. The treatment consisted of extracting baby teeth and placing fillings.
The parents of the deceased minor explained at the hospital that the girl had remained for four hours under observation in the dental clinic because she had not recovered well from the sedation they had administered to her intravenously. However, she was discharged and once home, after a moment in which she seemed to have recovered, she fell into an extremely serious state, so her parents transferred her to La Ribera hospital, in Alzira, where she entered with cardiorespiratory arrest.
The dentist and owner of the Mireia dental clinic, with more than 20 years of experience, said Thursday that the girl left the practice “apparently well” and that the anesthetist does not know what may have happened. And he underlined that the sedation “batch” was under investigation.
The Homicide Group of the State Police is investigating the facts and the Ministry of Health has also launched a health investigation that could help explain what happened, such as the drugs administered, their traceability or clinical authorizations, and has listened to the specialist who anesthetized the deceased girl.
The department reported on Saturday that the clinic does not have health authorization to perform anesthetic activity techniques, including sedation with intravenous drugs. The Health Services Inspection Service of the Ministry of Health had a meeting on Saturday with the anesthesiologist who treated the two girls.
The College of Dentists and Stomatologists of Valencia (ICOEV) today released a statement saying that the dental treatment and administration of intravenous anesthesia carried out in a private dental clinic in Alzira “were carried out by registered professionals”.
The university body “deeply regrets the death of the minor and the hospitalization of another after dental treatment in both cases with sedation administered by a specialist in anesthesia from the city of Alzira”. After expressing its condolences to the affected family and wishing a positive outcome for the other hospitalized minor, the Board underlined that, in both cases, “the dental treatments were carried out by a registered professional trained in pediatric dentistry and, instead, the administration of intravenous anesthesia was carried out by a doctor specialized in anaesthesia”. They add that, as there is no official investigation in this regard and given the possible judicialization of the case, they will not make further assessments “both out of respect for the ongoing investigation and out of the institution’s responsibility and prudence in not knowing specific circumstances”.
This statement was made public the day after the Spanish Society of Anesthesiology, Resuscitation and Pain Therapy (SEDAR) released its own. In this note, after the condolences addressed to the family of the deceased girl, he recalled the importance that sedations are “carried out exclusively by doctors specialized in Anesthesiology and Resuscitation.
In his statement he called for “prudence, respect and institutional responsibility” and underlined that “at the moment the clinical data and the exact circumstances” of the event are not known, therefore it is not possible to comment on what happened or evaluate causes, actions or responsibilities. However, he insisted that sedations using general anesthetic drugs are “procedures with potentially serious, even fatal, risks and should only be performed by doctors specializing in Anesthesiology and Resuscitation”.
