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VA should test thousands of dental patients, report says

Dayton VA Medical Center February 8, 2011. At least 535 veterans who received care at the Dayton VA Medical Center's dental clinic from 1992 to July 2010 will be offered free screening to see if they were infected when a dentist failed to change his Latex gloves and sterilize tools between patients.

JIM NOELKER Dayton VA Medical Center February 8, 2011. At least 535 veterans who received care at the Dayton VA Medical Center's dental clinic from 1992 to July 2010 will be offered free screening to see if they were infected when a dentist failed to change his Latex gloves and sterilize tools between patients.

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VA official admits to ‘failure of leadership’ at Dayton clinic

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By Ben Sutherly, Staff Writer Updated 10:05 PM Thursday, April 21, 2011

DAYTON — A Greater Dayton Area Hospital Association task force on Thursday released an interim report calling on the VA to test for blood-borne pathogens in thousands of patients seen by a VA dentist.

The dentist failed to change gloves and sterilize equipment between patients, according to the VA.

The VA in February said it would offer free screening to 535 patients who received invasive dental work from the dentist, Dr. Dwight Pemberton, between 1992 and July 2010. That invasive dental work includes crown, bridge, root canal, filling and removal.

So far, the VA has confirmed two patients are newly positive for hepatitis B, and further testing is under way in an effort to determine if those infections happened at the VA’s dental clinic.

The GDAHA task force disagreed with the VA’s decision to limit testing. “We encourage the Dayton VA Medical Center to test all patients served by the dentist in question and offer testing to next-of-kin of deceased patients served by the dentist in question,” Bryan Bucklew, GDAHA president and chief executive, said in a prepared statement.

Bucklew told the Dayton Daily News the total number of patients seen by Pemberton since 1975 likely was more than 2,000. That figure is based on informal communication with dental clinic workers with knowledge of the situation, he said.

The VA had no immediate comment Thursday morning. But according to a Dec. 17 VA clinical review board memo, the board initially recommended disclosure to all patients seen by Pemberton at the dental clinic since 1975. The review board, however, later modified that recommendation, saying that prior to 1992 the dentist in question had a regularly assigned dental assistant, making the risk to patients “negligible.”

“However, from 1992 to the present, the dentist in question worked alone most of the time, and this is the peak period of risk to patients,” the report reads.

The GDAHA task force also requested more documents from the VA in order to complete its independent review.

“The current information publicly released by the Dayton VA Medical Center is not complete and does not provide a clear picture or context on this situation, or how it continued for such an extended period of time under the direction of several different leadership teams,” the interim report reads.

U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Centerville, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) requested the GDAHA review.

“It’s clear that many questions are left unanswered on the part of the VA,” Turner said in a prepared statement. “We’re still not sure about the extent to which this was overlooked by key leadership, and how that will be addressed going forward.

“Furthermore, it appears many more dental patients need to be notified that they could have been possibly exposed to infectious disease. Every veteran who saw this dentist during his tenure is at risk until adequate testing has been performed.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-7457 or bsutherly@DaytonDailyNews.com.

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