TOTH: DENTIST ORDERED TO RETRAIN AFTER ERROR

A dentist who prescribed an elderly woman an antibiotic she was allergic to has been ordered to undergo two years of re-training.

The patient was left with red rashes all over her body after Arpad Toth failed to notice large, red capital letters on the front of the woman’s medical notes stating she had a penicillin allergy.

He made the error despite the woman, referred to as Patient A, repeatedly asked whether it was safe for her to take penicillin-based amoxicillin, the General Dental Council heard.

Panel chairman Robin Heron told the dentist his actions were ‘seriously negligent and such that fellow professionals as well as members of the public would find them deplorable.’

‘This was a very serious error,’ he said.

‘On your own admission there were alerts on the incomplete computer records which you should have acted on by interrogating further the computer and paper records.

‘Had you done so, you would have very clearly and very quickly seen that the patient was allergic to penicillin.

‘As a consequence you incorrectly prescribed a penicillin-based antibiotic to a patient who was allergic to penicillin.’

The conditions, which will run for 24 months, require him to be mentored while he follows a ‘personal development plan’ on prescriptions, patient communication, record-keeping, and medical histories.

He must also keep a log of all medications he prescribes, which must be submitted to the GDC every six months, and must tell anyone he works for of the ruling against him.

The panel ruled that Toth had not known of Patient A’s allergy but that he ‘ought to’ have known.

Patient A initially visited Toth at Bodmin Dental Care, Bodmin, Cornwall, on June 1, 2009, for an emergency appointment after suffering an infection following the removal of a tooth by another dentist at the surgery the previous month.

Another antibiotic prescribed at the time had failed to cure the infection and she was left suffering debilitating pain.

Her daughter, referred to as Ms A, said Toth offered to prescribe her a seven-day course of ‘something different’ to deal with the problem.

‘He looked at the dental notes, and he said he was going to provide mum with amoxicillin,’ she said.

‘It sounded a lot like penicillin, and mum said ‘I’m allergic to penicillin, are you sure this will be OK?’.

‘He said that they would be fine because they weren’t penicillin-based.

‘Mum asked him a couple of times after that, and I asked.

‘Mr Toth was the professional and we had no reason not to trust him – we took his word for it.’

Ms A said within days her mother suffered itchy red rashes all over her body and it became obvious that she had suffered an allergic reaction.

She died later that year after being admitted to hospital for an unrelated chest infection.

Toth, who qualified in Witten, Germany, in 2001, was found guilty of prescribing amoxicillin when he should have known of Patient A’s allergy.

He was cleared of telling her that the drug was ‘not penicillin-based’.
ends