Dental Malpractice Cases Involving Osteomyelitis of the Jaw | Florida Dental Malpractice Lawyer

Time Stamps:
00:00 - Introduction
00:58 - What is Osteomyelitis?
02:17 - What Makes a Good or Winnable Osteomyelitis Case?
04:14 - How Do You Know If You Have Osteomyelitis?
05:30 - We Offer Free Consultations, and We're Here to Help

Osteomyelitis of the Jaw and Dental Malpractice

Cases involving osteomyelitis of the jaw are some of the most intense dental malpractice cases. Often times, the result of osteomyelitis is like something from a horror movie. In some cases, the patient loses a huge portion of his or her jaw and is left with a chunk of jaw bone floating around. The way they fix this is by connecting the ends of the jaw bone with a titanium plate. After that, the patient often needs a bone transplant from another part of the body to fill the gap in the jaw. This bone often comes from the patient’s hip.

What is Osteomyelitis?

Osteomyelitis of the jaw is an infection of the jaw that can develop after a dental procedure. The word “osteomyelitis” literally means inflammation of the bone marrow. Typically, our osteomyelitis cases involve infection in the lower jaw.

Osteomyelitis is hard to stop once it gets going. If you can imagine starting a fire in a fire place. It takes a long time to get a piece of wood burning without some sort of fuel or accelerant. However, once the block of wood catches on fire, you have to wait til it’s finished burning or pour water on it to put it out.

Like that block of wood, bone tissue is generally resistant to an infection. However, once the infection catches on, it can be extremely difficult to treat. That’s why our clients often need to get on IV antibiotics or a PICC line for 6 or 8 weeks after the osteomyelitis in their jaw is discovered.

What Makes a Good or Winnable Osteomyelitis Case?

Whether a dentist is liable in dental malpractice will depend on whether the dentist breached the standard of care. In an osteomyelitis case, we’re typically looking at some type of apathy or failure to timely diagnose the condition. In the osteomyelitis cases that bring the most value -- where the dentist gets hammered the hardest--there is some sort of clear and obvious issue that the dentist should have seen, and then the dentist fails to notice the issues after the visit.

Typically, in the best cases, there is a clear issue that caused the infection, like a broken jaw after a wisdom tooth extraction that the doctor doesn’t see, notice, or tell the patient about. Then, the patient comes back to the doctor multiple times, and the doctor doesn’t diagnose or treat the infection properly. By the time the patient goes to a competent doctor, the infection has done tremendous damage that could have been avoided. This situation is even worse for the dentist if the wisdom tooth didn’t need to be pulled in the first place.

How Do You Know If You Have Osteomyelitis?

If you have osteomyelitis, you’ll obviously feel pain and swelling. But you may also experience fever, fatigue, and headaches, or you may experience heat in your face around the area of the jaw that’s infected. You may also notice a lump on your jaw, or you may have stiffness in your jaw that causes difficulty eating or speaking. You may also experience drainage of the infection or chills.

If you have any symptoms like these and if you’ve undergone a dental surgical procedure or an extraction, you may have osteomyelitis. If you think you need help with a dental malpractice matter, we’re happy to give you a free consultation with a Florida dental malpractice lawyer and talk to you about what’s going on. Even if we can’t take your case, we may be able to give you some guidance or lead you to the right attorney. My law partner and I opened this firm to help people, and we’re happy to help you however we can. We’re here if you need us.

Spetsas Buist PLLC
225 E Robinson St, Suite 542
Orlando, FL 32801
(321) 352-7588
www.CarelessDentist.com