17-Year-Old Dies After Having Wisdom Teeth Removed

17-year-old Sydney Galleger from Minnesota, US, has died following complications after routine wisdom teeth surgery.

Miss Galleger went to her dentist to have outpatient surgery on her wisdom teeth last week. Roughly a week after the "simple, common" procedure, Sydney's blood pressure shot up, her pulse dropped and she went into cardiac arrest. 

Her mother, Diane, wrote on her page that paramedics arrived quickly and were able to stabilize her so she could be transferred to the U of M Amplatz Children's Hospital.

The journal entries posted since that day detail Sydney's battle with seizures and doctors' attempts to stop the swelling in her brain and then eventually that she had passed away.

It is suspected that she had an underlying heart condition that was exacerbated by the general anesthetic.

An increasing number of young people are getting their wisdom teeth removed, and only 30% of those surgeries are warranted according to Jay Friedman, a retired dental surgeon who wrote a paper outlining the risks of wisdom tooth extraction.

"If there are legitimate reasons to have the teeth removed, they should be removed, preferably with a local anesthetic, which reduces risks," Dr. Friedman told Cosmopolitan.

"But people should not be subjected to any risk when there are not sound, evidence-based reasons to undergo that — or any — surgery."

He recommends talking through options with your dentist before deciding to go under general anesthetic.

"Most deaths occuring during or after wisdom tooth extraction occur in normal, healthy people, and are related to IV sedation or general anesthesia," Dr. Friedman said.

But, Dr. Friedman explains that wisdom teeth can be removed using local anesthetic instead of going under and all options should be considered before undergoing surgery, as one death from this operation is one too many.

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