Washington Dentist’s Sedation Permit Suspended Following Patient’s Death During Procedure

A Lakewood dentist’s license to numb patients was recently taken away permanently because of unsafe practices after a man who was already sick died during a treatment to remove several teeth.

The Dental Quality Assurance Commission of the state Department of Health and Thi Nguyen, who runs Gravelly Lake Dentistry, agreed to an order last month that suspended Nguyen’s license to use parenteral agents for moderate sedation in Washington for an indefinite amount of time. A copy of the order shows this. Giving drugs to a patient through an IV or an injection is called parenteral medicine.

A spokesperson for the state health department confirmed that Ngyuen can still work as a dentist even though he earlier denied doing anything wrong. This is because his license to do so is still valid.

Nguyen can also ask the board to give him back his permit. If he won, he would have to follow several rules, such as paying a $25,000 fine, giving the commission $10,000 back, and letting his sedation cases be audited without warning. He would also have to get more education.

Records from the state health department show that Nguyen’s sedation permit and dentist’s license were both taken away in early November because of claims of dangerous practices after a patient died while under moderate sedation in June 2022. The license suspension ended at the end of November because there wasn’t enough proof that the punishment was needed “to ensure that the license holder would no longer pose an immediate threat to the public health and safety.”

A health department document said that the permit suspension would stay in place until there was a full administrative review of the claims.

In November, Nguyen told The News Tribune that he was not guilty of any of the charges and was looking forward to proving his case at the meeting. He and his lawyer did not answer messages sent Friday and Monday asking them to comment on the latest move.

On July 29, the commission agreed and signed an order that took away Nguyen’s sedation permit for good because he had been found to have behaved badly at work. He didn’t properly and thoroughly evaluate the patient’s level of risk; he didn’t talk to the patient’s doctors or keep an eye on or write down all of the patient’s vital signs at the right times after giving them medicine; and, as ordered, he gave them too little of a drug that could have saved their lives before emergency services arrived.

The patient was getting dental work done before a planned surgery on a heart valve when, according to the health department, his oxygen saturation level, heart rate, and blood pressure started to drop around five minutes in. For about 40 minutes, the first rescuers tried to bring him back to life. The patient had a history of high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, chronic kidney disease, extreme obesity, and other health problems.

The website for Gravelly Lake Dentistry says that Nguyen has been a dentist in the Lakewood area for 20 years.