Teenage girl dies hours after going to dentist with toothache
A 19-year-old female student has died just hours after visiting her dentist with a toothache.
Anastasia Sapronova went into anaphylactic shock after her dentist injected her with pain relief.
The dentist who administered the pain relief was reportedly in a panic and heard shouting “Google it!” to find out what action to take when Ms Sapronova began showing a negative reaction to the injection.
Tragically, Anastasia, died 22 hours hours later in Plavsk, Russia.
It was her distraught mother Natalia Sapronova, 44, waiting outside the surgery door, who heard bungling dentist Natalia Vasiliyeva yelling to a dental assistant.
A court in Plavsk heard Ms Vasiliyeva had given Ms Sapronova, a pain killer that triggered the anaphylactic shock.
In an attempt to stop the reaction, Ms Vasiliyeva gave the teenager ammonia instead of adrenaline, an act which the court found contributed to Anastasias death.
Ms Sapronova said she heard the commotion in the surgery, and opened the door.
“I heard slaps… slaps on the cheeks,” she told the court.
“And I heard the words ‘Google it’,” the distressed mother added.
Ms Sapronova told the court that the memory of the distressing sound was something she would never be able to erase.
“I will never forget it until the end of my life,” she said.
Ms Sapronova said when she was able to reach her daughter, she was clearly having a reaction.
“I came in, my child was very pale, rolling her eyes,” the mother said.
As Anastasia’s condition worsened, the dentist called paramedics while Ms Sapronova tried to comfort her daughter.
“I said – ‘are you afraid?’, she said ‘Yes, I am afraid, I am unwell’…” Ms Sapronova said.
Paramedics arrived and administered an injection of adrenaline but it was too late.
Anastasia became unconscious and was rushed to a local hospital and later moved to regional capital Tula where she died the day after her dental appointment.
A court convicted Ms Vasiliyeva of medical negligence and sentenced her to home detention for two-and-a-half years but she is still able to work as a dentist.
Anastasia’s family vowed to appeal the "lenient" sentence.
An internal investigation by the regional health authorities found “defects” in the medical care Anastasia received both by the dentist and at Plavsk Central Hospital.
The mother was told Anastasia had a “severe complicated allergic reaction” to the pain relief injection administered by Ms Vasiliyeva.
“There were violations in providing medical help,” the official report stated.
The report included “wrong diagnosis and an incorrect way of dealing with anaphylactic shock”.
The court heard Anastasia could have been saved if the dentist injected adrenaline in time.
Anastasias mother said she was still in shock over the sudden loss of her daughter.
“Even in a nightmare you cannot think of such an outcome of going to a dentist…” she said.
— With Australscope
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