A 5-YEAR-OLD child accidentally swallowed a 3-centimeter-long needle-shaped metal dental tool while receiving a root canal treatment at a dental hospital in Futian District on April 28. The tool was excreted from the child’s body that night, SZTV reported.
The boy, identified as Yangyang, was taken by his father to Fuhua Stomatological Hospital to get a second treatment for his bad tooth on the morning of April 28. Yangyang’s father was outside the treatment room where Yangyang was when the accident happened.
While a dentist, surnamed Li, was cleaning Yangyang’s bad tooth with a needle-shaped tool, he accidentally dropped the tool inside Yangyang’s mouth and Yangyang swallowed the metal tool.
According to Yangyang’s father, who did not know what had happened at that moment, several dentists in the hospital rushed into the room and called an ambulance after examining the child for less than 30 seconds. Yangyang was then sent to Shenzhen Children’s Hospital.
Through an X-ray examination, a doctor at the children’s hospital confirmed that the metal tool had already arrived to Yangyang’s large intestine. It was then Yangyang’s father realized that Yangyang had swallowed the metal tool.
Yangyang took a laxative medication under the doctor’s instruction and eventually excreted the tool by 8 p.m. that day. The boy stayed at the children’s hospital for further examination to check whether his intestines or stomach had been injured.
A nurse from the dental hospital arrived at the children’s hospital later and said she came to pay the treatment fee for the child and had also bought daily supplies as well as food for Yangyang.
The head of the dental hospital also paid several visits to Yangyang and said the hospital would take full responsibility for the accident. The hospital has already paid 1,000 yuan (US$157.31) for Yangyang and will shoulder more treatment fees if necessary.
According to the dental hospital, Li, who treated Yangyang, was a licensed dentist and was using the tool to clean out the rotten part of Yangyang’s bad tooth. However, Yangyang was moving during the operation and the dentist dropped the tool.
When questioned about why Li had not attached a string to the tool so as to avoid dropping it, the dental hospital said there was not yet a compulsory rule requiring dentists to do so.
Another dentist from a public dental hospital responded by saying that China does not currently have a regulation on stabilizing such tools with strings and each hospital follows their own methods.
A post on an online dentistry forum also showed that some dental tools are too smooth, so sometimes dentists might drop the tools in patients’ mouths by accident. Tying a string to the tool and to the dentist’s finger is the best way to avoid such accidents, according to the post.