How Much are Tongues Worth?

chewedtoothpick asks: "How many of you have had dental work where they had to numb your tongue and everything? I did about six months ago and my tongue never became UN-numb. Aparently they hit a nerve, which seldom occurs and shouldn't happen according to a few dentists and a family member who is an oral surgeon. The dentist told me that it can take as long as six months to heal, but I have also heard from a few people which this has happened to; that if it's not normal within a couple of months that it will never come back. I know one lady who is a regular client at my shop who has had a numb tongue for almost 10 years! Luckily; in my case, this is only half of my tongue, so I am not completely impaired in speech or taste. What I do want to know is what would all or any of you do? Would you sue, and how much for? Would you demand a full refund for the dental work?"

Re:suing... and Informed Consent

[Anonymous Coward]

Good answer, well thought out, just what I was thinking myself. Every medical and surgical procedure has risks inherent to it, and individual differences in anatomy are just one part of it. There may be individual differences in the pharmacology or pharmacokinetics of the anesthetic agent (your body's receptors may be genetically different or the mechanisms for clearing out the local anesthetic may be altered, e.g. different binding in your liver enzymes), there could be an anomalous branch of a nerve nearby that got injured and injected into directly rather than right next to it. Maybe too much anesthetic agent was injected into it which may lead to irreparable harm from increased pressure within the nerve sheath.

The question is whether this really constitutes malpractice or is an accident. If this dentist does this consistently, maybe it's not so much of an accident. Maybe if your anatomy or physiology is different, there is no way that this could have been avoided. Maybe every dentist uses the same landmarks to target where to inject the anesthetic, and they would all have gone to the same place anyway. In that case, this truly is accidental and not malpractice. Tough call. But I'd also have to lean on the side of not suing.