Placing a tube in a patient's airway can push things where they don't belong, said Dr. Mary Dale Peterson, an anesthesiologist at Driscoll Children's Hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas.
Besides dentures, retainers, loose teeth and tongue piercings can cause problems, said Peterson, who is president-elect of the American Society of Anesthesiologists. Before a child's surgery, she'll pull a very loose tooth and tell the patient to expect a visit from the tooth fairy. "We can make a nice game of it."
In the British case, after the dentures were removed, the man had several bouts of bleeding that required more surgery before he recovered. The journal article didn't identify the man or the hospital involved.
What can be learned from this case? Doctors need to listen carefully to their patients and build a timeline of what happened rather than relying heavily on scans and tests, said Dr. Rui Amaral Mendes, an associate editor of BMJ Case Reports, which published the paper Monday.
For their part, patients should tell their doctors about mouth problems before surgery, said Mendes, an oral surgeon at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. That includes dentures, blisters and serious gum disease. Loose teeth could be knocked down the throat when tubes are put into the airway.
"Stay on the safe side," he said. "Inform your physician of what's going on in your mouth."
- AP
