Lessons learned from dental patient safety case reports.

Area of Science:

• Dental medicine
• Patient safety
• Healthcare quality

Background:

• Medical errors are prevalent in healthcare, including dentistry.
• Systematic approaches are needed to intercept and mitigate dental errors.
• Understanding the types and causes of dental errors requires further study.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze dental adverse events reported in the literature.
• To identify patterns and causes of errors in dental care.
• To highlight the impact of adverse events on patient outcomes.

Main Methods:

• Retrospective review of 182 publications (270 cases) on dental adverse events.
• Data extraction on incident characteristics, causes, and patient harm.
• Analysis of case reports from electronic bibliographic databases.

Main Results:

• Delayed treatment, unnecessary treatment, or disease progression after misdiagnosis were the most common harms.
• 24.4% of patients experienced permanent harm.
• 11.1% of reported adverse events resulted in patient death.

Conclusions:

• Published case reports offer insights into dental adverse events but are insufficient.
• A lack of comprehensive reporting hinders a full understanding of dental patient safety issues.
• Increased publication of detailed adverse event case reports is recommended for dental practitioners.