What are my rights if I had a dental implant that caused nerve damage?
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What are my rights if I had a dental implant that caused nerve damage?
The surgery date was 2 months ago. I have numbness and pain on my face from lower jaw implant. The dentist is checking on me but there is no improvment. Can I ask the dentist to pay for nerve damage repair and compensation for the cost of dental implant that he performed?
Asked on March 9, 2013 under Malpractice Law, Mississippi
Answers:
SJZ, Member, New York Bar / FreeAdvice Contributing Attorney
Answered 11 years ago | Contributor
You can certainly ask for compensation. If the dentist will not pay it, you'd have to sue--bring and win a malpractice suit--to recover the money. Bear in mind that not every bad outcome is malpractice; the law accepts that medicine is still an art, not a science, in many ways, and sometimes a doctor or dentist does everything right, but the patient still suffers. For it to be malpractice, the dentist must typically have been careless, or negligent in some way, so that he provided medical care which does not meet currently accepted standards: for example, he misdiagnosed what you needed, or used the wrong type of implant, or performed the procedure in a careless or substandard way, etc. If malpractice was committed, you could potentially recover the medical costs it caused you to incur, and possibly also some amount for pain and suffering. You should consult in person with a medical malpractice attorney to see if you may have a case, what it might be worth, and what it may cost to pursue it.
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