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A former employee of a Seoul dental clinic where two patients died during implant surgery has alleged that the clinic extracted teeth that did not need to be removed.
The former employee, identified only as A, told MBN on Wednesday that the clinic targeted elderly patients who struggled to afford expensive implant treatment.
"When a patient comes in, all their teeth are pulled out that same day," A said. "It's not about whether the teeth are good or bad — it's about how many implants can be put in once the teeth are extracted." Patient safety, A suggested, was an afterthought in what amounted to a high-volume, low-margin approach to dental care.
A also described how staff deflected patients' concerns. "If a patient said, 'Miss, I'm bleeding — what should I do?' the front desk would say, 'I've already told the treatment room,' and the treatment room would say, 'Ask the front desk.' Everyone just passed the buck," A said.
At the same clinic, a patient who underwent surgery to have 11 implants placed simultaneously deteriorated rapidly just 16 minutes after receiving medication on Dec. 30 last year. The patient was transferred to the emergency room of a nearby university hospital in cardiac arrest and later died.
Emergency room records from the university hospital showed that clinic staff told attending physicians they had used 16 cartridges of articaine. Articaine is a local anesthetic commonly used in dentistry; the recommended maximum dose is 7 milligrams per kilogram of body weight.
The victim weighed only 54 kilograms yet reportedly received 1,088 milligrams of the drug — nearly three times the permissible limit. The overdose appears to have resulted from the volume of anesthetic required across 11 simultaneous implant procedures.
The National Forensic Service recently concluded that the victim's death was likely caused by a toxic reaction to articaine.
A similar fatal incident was also reported at the same clinic on Aug. 3.
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