Parents blame Tampa dentist for son's death

The parents of a 9-year-old boy who died while being sedated at a South Tampa dentist's office are suing the dentist, saying he and his staff were negligent when they gave the boy anesthesia.

Cory Moore Jr. died Feb. 19, 2009, in the office of dentist R. Andrew Powless at Florida Special Care Dentistry on Davis Boulevard, according to the lawsuit filed April 22 in Hillsborough Circuit Court.

On the day the lawsuit was filed, a 5-year-old boy died while being sedated at a Gainesville dentist's office, according to Alachua County sheriff's Lt. Stephen Maynard.

But an expert in pediatric dentistry said such deaths are unusual, especially given the hundreds of thousands of sedations performed each year in pediatric dental offices nationwide.

"It's a rare event, but when it occurs it's a tragic event and we certainly don't want it to occur," said Milton Houpt, chairman of pediatric dentistry at the New Jersey Dental School, who studies the issue.

The Florida Department of Health has just one other case on record, involving a 10-year-old who died in Boca Raton in 2006.

In the Tampa lawsuit, Zondria Williams says she notified Powless' office staff that her son had eaten before the procedure, but that he was sedated anyway.

An autopsy found the child died of aspiration of gastric contents during administration of anesthesia for tooth extraction, according to the Hillsborough County Medical Examiner's Office.

Florida Special Care Dentistry referred questions to Tampa lawyer James Wetzel, who could not be reached for comment today.

Orlando lawyer Maria D. Tejedor, who represents Williams and Cory Moore Sr., also could not be reached.

In the Gainesville case, Dylan Stewart of Cedar Key was getting fillings and caps in the office of dentist Ronnie Grundset, Maynard said. A determination of his cause of death is pending toxicology tests.

Houpt said there are no national statistics on the number of children who die while being sedated in dental offices. The available information is anecdotal, said Houpt, who is conducting a survey with a colleague that includes questions about whether dentists have experienced deaths in their offices.

"In a sample of 2,000 practitioners, you may have one or two" deaths, Houpt said. But that estimate also is anecdotal.

"There has, over the years, been increasing attention to this issue in order to make sedation as safe as possible," he said. "That attention led to the development of guidelines and the review of those guidelines on an ongoing basis.

"I think it's important to recognize there are literally hundreds of thousands of sedations each year and they're almost always performed in a safe fashion," Houpt said.