Dental Nurse destroys patient’s sinuses during extraction
- Victim admitted at GPHC
Family members of Desiree France yesterday related a horrifying tale of their experiences while France was a patient at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC), over the past few days.
France, 34, of East Bank Berbice was admitted to the hospital’s Female Surgical ward last Friday with a sinus infection. The infection had led to inflammation leaking through her nose and mouth.
Although the patient has been in the hospital since last Friday, her family claimed that she has not been seen by any doctors.
They further claimed that patients, who were in the room with France claimed that she suffered two seizures and fell off the bed on Monday last, and when the nurses were notified, they left her on the floor until two attendants were available.
Sinus is a cavity within a bone or other tissue most commonly found in the bones of the face and connecting with the nasal cavity. Sinusitis however, is a swelling of the tissue lining the sinuses. Normally sinuses are filled with air but when they become blocked and filled with fluid, germs can grow and cause infection.
France did an extraction of a tooth in the upper jaw at the New Amsterdam Hospital on May 14, 2012. On her way home, she discovered that she was bleeding through her nose and immediately informed her sister, Karen France, a nurse at the hospital for 19 years.
Karen France advised her to revisit her at the hospital, where they both went to the dental doctor to explain the situation.
After seeing the dental doctor, Desiree France, who is also a nurse at a hospital in Black Bush Polder, was told that the dental nurse, who did the extraction, had destroyed the sinuses, according to Karen France.
She said that the doctor then sutured her sister’s gum the very day and sent her home. During the course of the night, Desiree France continued to experience severe pain, forcing her relatives to rush her to the Accident and Emergency Unit (A&E) at the New Amsterdam Hospital.
“There, she was seen by a doctor (name given), who prescribed some medication and asked her to return the following day to the doctor, who did the operation,” the sister related.
When the family visited the said doctor the following day, they were told that the sinus will take at least six months to close and requested them to take her home.
“When we took her back the Thursday, he referred her to the Ear, Nose and Throat Department. When we took her there, the doctor sent her for an X-ray of the face and mouth. She did the X-ray on the Friday May 18, 2012 and he referred her to a private doctor in Georgetown.”
She explained that they made an appointment and took her to the private doctor on Monday (May 21).
“The doctor said that the sinus was badly damaged and if she had stayed there one more day, she would have developed Sinusitis. She did the operation on my sister and was forced to remove two of her teeth but the sinus was still open, so she called for a surgeon, who came the same day.
The surgeon said that my sister needed to undergo further surgery to remove a piece of her gum for the necessary graft. He advised her not to eat anything, to only drink cold liquid for ten days.
After the ten days, she returned to the private clinic and was told that the “gum was looking good”. She was then discharged from the private clinic.
“She resumed duty on May 29 and on the following day, she called me and told me that she was experiencing numbness stretching from her right side face to her right foot. We took her again to the New Amsterdam Hospital and the doctor gave her some medication and sent her home.
“We then took her to a private doctor, who told us that because the sinus was left open for so long, she had developed a facial neuralgia.”
This is the occurrence of pain in the middle ear and auditory canal caused by inflammation. Facial neuralgia can cause paralysis, if it is not treated.
She was given medication and sent away. Last Monday however, when she woke up, there were streaks of unpleasant inflammation running out from her nose and her mouth.
Desiree France’s relatives then rushed her back to the New Amsterdam hospital. She was required to do a surgery but the family was informed that there was no anesthetist.
She was then transferred to GPHC’ s ENT department. The doctor at that hospital was in theatre, so he sent the family to a doctor at Woodlands hospital, who refused to look at the woman and sent her back to the public hospital.
They had to return to Berbice without being seen by a doctor. The following day, after being pushed around for several hours, Desiree France was then admitted to the hospital. After spending four days in the hospital, she has not yet been seen by a doctor, according to the sister.
She said when she visited the hospital yesterday; persons informed her that her sister had suffered three seizures in a few hours.
“Even when I went there during visitation hour, the doctors asked us to leave the room because they were now going and check on her, I stood outside and saw the bed shaking and when I rush in the room, I saw my sister suffering from another seizure and hitting her head on the bed and the doctors them leave the room.”
Karen France is now calling on the hospital to investigate the manner in which the nurses at GPHC tend to patients. “I watch the Minister on TV, talking about the quality of the hospital and he bragging that his hospital gives 100 percent treatment but I wouldn’t give them even five percent for the treatment my sister is receiving.”
