Dentist's drill bit lodged in patient's sinus cavity

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — A dentist who was dancing to the song "Car Wash" while extracting a patient's tooth lost an inch-long drill bit, which punctured the patient's sinus cavity and came to rest by her eye socket, according to the woman's lawsuit.

Brandy Fanning, 31, underwent surgery at a hospital after the dentist, Dr. George Trusty, was unable to retrieve the bit, said Fanning's lawyer, Joseph Cote III. He said Fanning spent three days at the hospital, with a steady drip of intravenous morphine.

Fanning had gone to the emergency dental clinic at Syracuse Community Health Center in October 2004 after pain in a molar worsened. Trusty gave her novocaine and while he was drilling to break the molar into quadrants before the extraction, Fanning heard a snap.

During the procedure, the lawsuit said, Trusty was "performing rhythmical steps and movements to the song 'Car Wash,' " which was on the radio in the dental suite.

Trusty then used a metal hook to try to pull the bit out, but that only pushed it farther up, driving it through the sinus and bone, the lawsuit says.

Trusty's efforts to remove the bit gouged and scraped the inside of Fanning's sinus cavity and widened the hole where the bit entered, Cote said.

When Fanning asked what was happening, Trusty told her it wasn't a big deal and that she'd likely sneeze the drill bit out, she said.

She expressed alarm and he offered to call an oral surgeon who was a friend and get her an appointment for two days later, Fanning said. Trusty made the call in front of Fanning.

When he got off the phone, she said, he told her she needed to get to an emergency room immediately. The dentist then gave her an extra shot of novocaine in case she had to wait to see a doctor, she said.

Trusty, 57, reached at the health center, would not comment on the case, nor would he say how long he'd been a dentist at the health center.

According to the state Education Department, which handles the licensing of dentists, Trusty has no complaints against him and his license is valid.

In Trusty's notes after the procedure, he wrote, "Informed patient surgical burr was lost in sinuses."

Skull X-rays taken at University Hospital's emergency room show "a 2.5 cm linear metallic object in the left maxillary sinus," Dr. Precha Emko wrote in his hospital notes.

Emko, an ophthalmologist and an oral surgeon all performed the surgery the following day, using the Caldwell-Luc procedure, which bores a hole in the upper gum to access the inside of the face.

They had to use a chisel to break into the sinus wall, then cauterize that part of the sinus down to the bone, according to University Hospital records.

Fanning, who works for Verizon and is the mother of three boys, said doctors told her later that if she had sneezed with the bit still inside, she could have blinded her left eye.

Since the surgery, she has suffered facial swelling, nerve damage and has chronic infections because of bacteria that seep into her sinus cavity, she said.

She filed the lawsuit in federal court last month.