Parents in California are demanding answers after taking their three-year-old child to a routine dental procedure and learning she died.
Araceli Avila said she and her daughter Daleyza Avila Hernandez were referred to the Stockton’s Children’s Dental Surgery. According to reports, the child was supposed to get two of her teeth pulled and have caps on two additional teeth.
Jose Hernandez, the little girl’s father, said she ran after him and was in a happy mood.
According to Avila, she was not permitted to join her daughter in the operating room during the procedure for hygienic reasons. She said she’d been in the waiting for 30 minutes when she saw an ambulance pull up.
Avila said she knew they were coming for a child but never suspected it was for her child. She said a nurse came to talk to her and said something had gone wrong in the procedure. The nurse told Avila that her daughter had a negative reaction to the anesthetics, which caused her heart to stop.
Daleyza was taken to an area hospital where she died. Doctors are not sure what caused the little girl’s death.
Avila said the nurse told her not to worry that her daughter may have had an underlying heart condition that she was unaware of, but Avila said her daughter was healthy.
Children’s Dental Surgery Center Administrator David Thompson said this was the first incident of a child dying at the clinic. He didn’t go into details about the dentist or the anesthesiologist who did the surgery but said his staff is very competent and trained.
Thompson said he’s been at the center for 10 years and has never experienced a situation where this happened and hopes he never does again.
The Dental Board of California said it was investigating the incident. The board said specific details regarding the incident would not be shared immediately but that the board’s first concern is consumer protection. It offered its deepest sympathy to the little girl’s family.
Avila said she hopes her story will help other parents not to endure the pain she’s going through right now. She said what other parents do every day… take her daughter to the dentist to fix her teeth except now she’s burying her daughter.