Four Year Old Girl Is Left With Brain Damage After Going To Dentist

A four-year-old girl can no longer walk, talk, eat or see after a trip to the dentist to have a tooth removed.

Nevaeh Hall, four, was a healthy little girl two months ago, when her parents took her to Diamond Dentistry in Houston, Texas to have a few teeth capped and pulled due to decay.

READ: The 4-1-1 On Dental Emergencies

But how does that happen?

While they waited in the waiting room for hours, their little girl started having seizures but her dentist, Dr Bethaniel Jefferson, didn’t raise the alarm and decided to treat her herself instead of calling 911.

Little Nevaeh ended up leaving the routine appointment in an ambulance, and has now been hospitalized for severe brain damage.

At a press conference, Nevaeh’s mother Courissa Clark said she was threatening to sue the practice and Dr Jefferson for the botched procedure. The girl’s dentist, Dr Bethaniel Jefferson, has since had her medical license suspended.

She also warned other parents against a restraint device the dentist used to keep her daughter from flailing about during the procedure. That flailing could have warned the dentist or at least given them a clue that something was wrong earlier in the procedure.

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The device, called a papoose, covers small children like a cocoon essentially limiting a patients movements during a dental procedure.

Navaho after procedure, blind and unable to walk, talk or eat on her own. (Photo courtesy of ABC news video screen shot)

An attorney for the family revealed that Dr Jefferson administered five sedatives to the 30-pound child during the seven-hour procedure. Four hours of that procedure were spent in the papoose!

The papoose is most commonly used during dental work, venipuncture, and other medical procedures. It is also sometimes used during medical emergencies to keep an individual from moving when total sedation is not possible. It is usually used on patients as a means of temporarily and safely limiting movement and is generally more effective than holding the person down. It is mostly used on young patients and patients with special needs.

Although approved in the United States, in some countries the papoose is banned and considered a serious breach of ethical practice. Although the papoose board is discussed as a behavior management technique- it is simply a restraint technique thus preventing any behavior from occurring that could be managed with recognized behavioral and anxiety reduction techniques.

While the papoose board is promoted as safe and a way to avoid risk, psychological and physical harm can and does occur – including death.

About two hours into the procedure, Clark says she heard her daughter crying so she went into the room to see how she was doing. At that point she wasn’t in the papoose yet, but she could see her flailing about in the dental chair.

“When I went back there and saw her, my first question was: ‘OK, do we need to call the ambulance or are you all going to call the ambulance?’”

“And they said: ‘We’re just going to try to get her to calm down. We’re going to monitor her. We’re going to watch her. You guys have nothing to worry about, but we do need you all to wait in the waiting room and let her rest so she can walk back out of here,’” Clark recalled.

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“The whole time they just assured us that everything was OK. The next time we were allowed to come in is when the paramedics were actually coming back.”

An attorney for the family Jim Moriarity, held up a chart at the press conference, showing little Nevaeh’s vitals during the procedure. At one point the child’s oxygen levels got down to 49 per cent and her heartbeat went up to a racing 196 beats per minute.

“In essence what happened is this child was chemically and physically suffocated,” Jim Moriarty said. “This child suffered massive brain damage during that time period and that didn’t have to happen.”

Nevaeh’s parents are now threatening to sue the practice and Dr Jefferson, but they say no legal victory will reverse the damage Dr Jefferson has done.

“At this point there’s nothing else that can be done to get that same four year old back. It hurts to see her like that,” Clark said.

Nevaeh’s father Derrick Hall broke down in tears as be spoke about his brain-damaged daughter.

“It’s heartbreaking. It really is like…I never in a million years would have thought something like this would happen,” Hall told ABC news affiliate, KTRK.

The family has created a GoFundMe page to help with the costs of Nevaeh’s medical bills.

For more on brain damage and how your brain works, click here.