Routine dental exams are very common among toddlers and just recently a three-year-old girl died after a fatal reaction to anesthesia. Daleyza Avila-Hernandez visited her dentist to have two teeth capped and two teeth removed, a procedure that turned deadly to everyone’s surprise.
According to David Thompson, an office administrator at the Children’s Dental Surgery Center in Stockton, California where the procedure took place, the child was stabilized before being taken by ambulance to Saint Joseph’s Hospital, where she later died. Her mother was told that her daughter’s heart had stopped after being sedated.
“We have had tens of thousands of children here and this a first. This is not an easy thing to deal with. I’ve been doing this for almost ten years now; I’ve never seen a situation like this,” says Thompson. “We’re committed to helping kids every single day. That’s our mission, that’s why we’re here. It’s risky; not everyone wants to do it.”
Apparently, the little girl stopped breathing when she was under anesthesia, but she was in stable condition before the paramedics arrived. When her mother saw the ambulance arrive at the dental office, she didn’t even know that the patient was her daughter until 20 minutes later, which is something that really bothered the mother.
“This mother is devastated, she never thought that a dentist appointment was going to take her baby’s life,” says Laura Rojas, a relative of the Daleyza who also created a GoFundMe page for donations. “All I did was take my daughter to the dentist because they were going to fix her teeth and about 30 minutes later they brought her back dead,” says Araceli Avila, the child’s mother to Fox KTVU. Both her parents say that she was in good spirits when the child woke up that day and that she was a very healthy child.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time this happens. Baby teeth are very prone to decay and cavities are not uncommon especially if a baby uses a bottle for a long time. It is very unfortunate that this happened, especially at such a young age. There’s no way in telling how anesthesia will affect someone and many times children this young have undiagnosed allergies or heart problems. The cause of death is currently being investigated.