[Oral surgery as the patient's immediate cause of death]

The purpose of this study was to determine how often patients have died after treatment by an oral surgeon in the Netherlands. A review of the literature showed that this kind of complication has rarely been described in international literature. Subsequently, a small questionnaire was sent to 274 Dutch oral surgeons; 140 questionnaires were returned (51% response). The oral surgeons participating in the survey had had, on average, 21 years of work experience and 4.3% were women. Forty percent of the respondents confirmed that they had experienced the death of a patient after oral surgery. Most (18 patients) died after a dental extraction. The most important causes of death were post-operative spreading of an infection (15 patients), failing to survive oncology treatment (9 patients) and as the third cause of death, heart and/or lung failure was named (6 patients).