uhhh...Nightmare at the dentist’s office

A dentist at Syracuse Community Health Center, dancing to the song “Car Wash” while he was extracting a patient’s tooth, lost the inch-long drill bit, which punctured her sinus cavity and came to rest by her eye socket, according to her lawsuit.
Brandy Fanning, 31, of Eastwood, filed a lawsuit in federal court last month.

She underwent emergency surgery at University Hospital after Dr. George Trusty was unable to remove the bit, her lawyer, Joseph Cote III said. Trusty would not comment.
Fanning spent three days at the hospital, with a steady drip of intravenous morphine.

Since the October 2004 surgery, Fanning has suffered facial swelling, nerve damage and has chronic infections because of the bacteria that seeped into her sinus cavity, she said.

Fanning went to the emergency dental clinic at the health center after the pain in a molar on the left side started getting worse.

An exposed nerve made it sensitive to heat and cold and a root canal had been ruled out as a possible option, the lawsuit said.
Trusty gaveher some novocaine and while he was drilling to break the molar into quadrants before the extraction, Fanning heard a snap, she said.

During the procedure, the lawsuit said, Trusty was “performing rhythmical steps and movements to the song ‘Car Wash,’” which was on the radio in the dental suite.
While Trusty was drilling, part of the tooth was pried out, but she continued to feel pressure, Fanning said.
Trusty then used a metal hook to try to pull the bit out, but that only pushed it farther up, driving it through the sinus and bone, the lawsuit says.

Trusty’s efforts to remove the bit gouged and scraped the inside of Fanning’s sinus cavity and widened the hole where the bit entered, said Cote.

When Fanningasked what was happening, Trusty told her it wasn’t a big deal and that she’d likely sneeze the drill bit out, she said.

She expressed alarm and he offered to call an oral surgeon, who was a friend, and get her an appointment for two days later, Fanning said. Trusty made the call in front of Fanning. When he got off the phone, she said, he told her she needed to get to an emergency room immediately. The dentist then gave her an extra shot of novocaine in case she had to wait to see a doctor, she said.

Trusty, 57, reached at the health center, would not comment on the case, nor would he say how long he’d been a dentist at the health center. According to the state Education Department, which handles the licensing of dentists, Trusty has no complaints against him and his license is valid.

In Trusty’s notes after the procedure, he wrote, “Informed patient surgical burr was lost in sinuses.”

Skull X-raystaken at University Hospital’s emergency room show “a 2.5 cm linear metallic object in the left maxillary sinus,” Dr. Precha Emko wrote in his hospital notes.

“People from all over the hospital were coming to look at them and they were all, like, ‘Oh, my God!’” Fanning said.

“Multiple attempts were made to try to remove this in the ER that were unsuccessful,” said the summary notes of Emko, an ear, nose and throat specialist who has since retired and could not be reached for comment. Emko, an oral surgeon and ophthalmologist all performed the surgery the following day, using the Caldwell-Luc procedure, which bores a hole in the upper gum to access the inside of the face.

They had to use a chisel to break into the sinus wall, then cauterize that part of the sinus down to the bone, according to University Hospital records.

SICK