Baltimore, MD – A 9-year-old boy in Baltimore had only expected a routine cleaning. However, he got far more than he bargained for and came home having undergone three extractions without his mother being notified.
Shanda Flemming said that she had signed a permission slip that allowed her third grader, Michael, to have a teeth cleaning at his school’s after-school dental program. But later that day, he came home crying and had a swollen face.
“They just said they [were] gonna clean my teeth,” Michael told WJZ. The dental team allegedly failed to tell the boy what they were doing before performing the extractions.
While these school dental programs seem out of the ordinary for many, they are not without good reason. They began to spread more widely after a five-year-old died from an infected tooth in Prince George’s County in 2007. The infection went untreated, eventually abscessed, and spread fatal bacteria to the boy’s brain. He underwent two neural surgeries, but in just six short weeks, the boy died.
Following the boy’s death, and a number of institutional changes, the Maryland Medicaid dental-care program has been consistently recognized as one of the best in the nation for pediatric dentistry.
Nearly 15 percent of all Americans have some sort of anxiety or fear when visiting the dentist. If Michael did not fear the dentist already, he certainly does now.
As if the trauma of an impromptu extraction wasn’t enough, the longer procedure caused the boy to miss his bus, forcing him to walk almost a whole mile home, alone and in pain.
His mother was absolutely enraged at the school for not informing her that they’d be performing other dental procedures, nor giving her son any pain medication once the extractions were completed. She also said that Michael was scheduled for an appointment with his family dentist the following week.
“I just don’t understand how a school or a company can take it in their hands to do something like this to a child,” said Flemming.
The Baltimore City School District has declined comment to WJZ, citing HIPAA and privacy concerns.
