A 3-year-old Kansas boy died after what police said was an “unanticipated reaction to medicine” given to him during a dental procedure, a local report said. Abiel Zapata-Valenzuela, of Scott City, was reportedly at the dentist to have teeth extracted.
“The last thing I told him was cause he cried cause he felt the needle and stuff, so I told him, ‘Papi, everything is going to be okay.’ I’m like ‘You’re fine,’ and as a mother, you just feel like I failed him,” Nancy Valenzuela, the boy’s mother, told KWCH.com.
A Witchita police spokesman told KAKE.com that authorities were called at around 8 a.m. on July 6 about a child who became unresponsive while receiving dental treatment.
“It is believed that the child had an unanticipated reaction to medicine provided during the course of his dental procedures,” Officer Trevor Macy told KAKE.com.
His mother told KWCH.com that Abiel’s heart stopped beating at some point during the procedure.
In a statement provided to KAKE.com, Tiny Teeth Pediatric Dentistry, where Abiel was being treated, said it was “devastated by the death” of Abiel and said staff is praying for the family.
“Like Abiel’s family, we, too, want to understand how this tragic event may have occurred,” the statement said. “Our practice has never experienced an incident like this, and we had no reason to expect this procedure would be anything other than routine.”
The statement thanked EMS responders who arrived within minutes of the call.
“Didn’t expect to come out of there without a child,” Valenzuela told KWCH.com. “I don’t think any parent, any parent ever expects to come out of a place where you feel like they’d be secure… but we did.”
She did as his mother fail him. What 3 year old has teeth extracted and I am allergic to LIDOCAINE and how would they know and his little body,, the amount and so on. Make me sick and the two people should be held accountable.
His mother didn’t fail him, what an awful thing to say. We don’t know why he had to have teeth extracted maybe they were hurting him.
Sometimes things happen and they are truly accidental, there isn’t always someone to blame. You must be a person to say such horrible things.
Probably has malignant hyperthermia. It’s an inherited trait. My family has it. I’ve had a cousin die with it when he was 11. We can’t tolerate any anesthesia. It’s a blood and muscle disease. When given anesthesia our bodies can’t release potassium or magnesium from the blood to the muscles. It then quickly causes muscle burn out. It can affect any muscle including the heart making it look like a heart attack
Try not to sit in Judgement of others as this mother is probably going to feel she failed her child for the rest of her life… We will be judged the same as we judge so best to remember this . Little guy might have some disorder that made his teeth go bad or might have had a fall as I did as a kid and fell face down on the rail lines as my older brother tried to pull me along to keep up with him and instead of getting home before dad we ended up in the dentists rooms while he pulled two teeth and remade one that split away..and was hanging by the nerve so don’t be quick to vent venom Sometimes things that are stressful in our own lives make us too quick to accuse others.