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Army veteran fears he was infected with hepatitis C at VA dental clinic

Charles Johnson was a patient of dentist who did not follow sterilization guides.

Charles Johnson and his wife, Yvette, outside their Hamilton home. Charles, recently diagnosed with Hepatitis C, believes he was infected by his former dentist, Dwight Pemberton, the man he once knew affectionately as “Dr. P.”

Staff photo by Nick Daggy Charles Johnson and his wife, Yvette, outside their Hamilton home. Charles, recently diagnosed with Hepatitis C, believes he was infected by his former dentist, Dwight Pemberton, the man he once knew affectionately as “Dr. P.”

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By Mary McCarty, Staff Writer 3:58 PM Saturday, April 9, 2011

Charles Johnson already had endured his share of health problems, and then some: kidney cancer, diabetes, depression, high blood pressure and bad knees.

The 52-year-old Army veteran from Hamilton didn’t need the news that he was given recently: He is infected with hepatitis C.

“Now I have one more thing — and all because a dentist wasn’t doing his damn job,” Johnson said.

Johnson believes he was infected by his former dentist, Dwight M. Pemberton, the man he once knew affectionately as “Dr. P.”

Officials at the Dayton VA Medical Center now believe that between January 1992 and July 2010, Pemberton failed to change gloves and failed to sterilize instruments between patients, putting them at risk for hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV.

Johnson wasn’t one of the 535 patients contacted by the VA. The Hamilton man only went for testing after reading Dayton Daily News stories about Pemberton.

VA spokesman Craig Larson said he couldn’t discuss Johnson case, but said that to date, two veterans have tested positive for hepatitis B and three veterans have tested positive for hepatitis C, but “we have as of yet determined no link between these positive tests results and care with the dentist in question.”

In Johnson’s mind, however, there’s no doubt. He had been seeing Pemberton for new dentures for the past several years and has been receiving treatment at the dental clinic since the early ’90s.

“He was a very nice man,” he said of Pemberton. “I thought he was a bit eccentric, but I liked him quite a lot. I’m a former medic, orderly and nurse, it would never occur to me that someone would do what he was doing.”

Johnson did find it peculiar that Pemberton seemed more keenly interested in his family history than in his mouth.

“His hobby was ancestry, and he got very interested in mine,” he said. “I gave him my father’s number and he started calling me and my father several times a day. My father stopped answering his calls.”

To this day, Johnson hates to think ill of Pemberton, but what happened at the clinic, he said, was patient abuse: “The man knew better.”

Johnson’s wife, Yvette, said she would be less upset if the situation had been handled swiftly once it came to light. “The fact that they hid it for years is what enrages me,” she said. “If there hadn’t been a whistle-blower, this would still be going on, and no one would be the wiser.”

Larson acknowledged, “We cannot justify why it took so long to detect this lapse. The idea that a single practitioner’s failure to follow infection control practices continued undetected for a period of years and potentially put veterans at risk is unacceptable to VA.”

Johnson suspects the VA is lowballing the number of at-risk patients. He contrasted the number of Dayton patients who have been contacted — 535 over an 18-year-period — with the 1,700 patients contacted by the St. Louis VA for possible exposure to unsanitary practices during a one-year period. “I’m from Kentucky and I’m no genius,” Johnson quipped, “but it doesn’t add up.”

Larson, however, said that VA officials conscientiously reviewed 20 years of records and tracked down all the veterans who had undergone invasive procedures with Pembeton. “It was determined that 535 VA patients would be contacted and offered testing,” he said.

Johnson served as a medic and an orderly in Ft. Carson, Colorado, from 1976 to 1979 and served another six years in the National Guard before earning an honorable discharge. Yvette believes that veterans like her husband deserve the best in medical care, but are receiving considerably less. “It’s not only a disservice to veterans but a disservice to their families,” she said. “I haven’t had good nights since this happened. I’m embarrassed that I have to go to my doctor, who is a friend, and tell him that I have to be tested for hepatitis and HIV.”

Johnson stopped working at a nursing home six years ago because of knee injuries he said he sustained during basic training. His kidney cancer is in remission after surgery in July. He has no private insurance, and he hasn’t sought treatment yet for hepatitis C. “How can I trust them in the future if you couldn’t trust them for the past 18 years?” Johnson asked. “You put it all together and I’m damn near afraid to walk through the door.”

Larson said that veterans shouldn’t hesitate to seek treatment: “At VA, we are committed to keeping processes transparent so veterans and their families never need to question our commitment to their care. Since the corrections were put in place, the Dayton VA Medical Center was reviewed multiple times by VA teams and the independent Office of Inspector General.”

But Yvette said that trust won’t be such an easy thing to restore. “Think about the vets who could have been walking around with HIV and giving it to their partners,” she said. “There’s a huge ripple effect. It’s not just a little incident at the Dayton VA dental clinic.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2209 or mmccarty@Dayton

DailyNews.com.

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