A dental nurse told a tribunal today (Tues) of the

A dental nurse told a tribunal today (Tues) of the chaotic last moments of a ten-year-old boy who died having a tooth removed.

Kirsty Thompson said she had to swear and point out three times that little Darren Denholm was going green before any action was taken.

And she told the General Medical Council that ‘no-one was in charge’ at Edinburgh’s Peffermill Dental Clinic at the time of the tragedy.

The anaesthetist during the extraction, Dr John Evans-Appiah, allegedly made elementary errors which led to Darren’s death and he is now facing charges of
serious professional misconduct.

Evans-Appiah, 58, also failed to give sufficient anaesthetics to a 31-year-old woman during an emergency caesaren section at the Maidstone Hospital in Kent, causing her to to ‘writhe and scream’ in agony, the tribunal has heard.

Miss Thompson told the second day of the hearing that she been working at the clinic for about a year on October 9, 1998, when Darren came in with his mother and grandmother.

The nurse explained that things started to go wrong during the extraction when the dentist, Hallgeir Pedersen ‘forcefully’ wiggled Darren’s rotten molar.

Although Darren’s mouth fell open loosely, suggesting he was under anaesthetic, the boy kicked out when Mr Pedersen touched the tooth.

‘Darren started moving.

He was really kicking his legs out,’ Miss Thompson said.

She told how she held the boy’s ankles together, then passed the dentist a syringe of the local anaesthetic, Lignocaine.

‘Before he finished putting it in I could see Darren’s face going yellow,’ she recalled.

‘I remember saying: ”He’s going a funny colour”.

‘He was going a darker green, from yellow to green.

‘

By the third time she pointed out Darren’s condition, she was swearing at the two men.

‘I said he’s going f***ing green,’ she told the hearing.

At this point, Mr Pedersen pulled out the syringe but over half the dose had gone in.

Miss Thompson said Mr Pedersen kept saying ‘This isn’t right,’ and Dr Evans-Appiah looked worried.

‘There was no-one in charge,’ she told the hearing.

The nurse said she was trying to get resuscitation equipment ready, but was unable to understand what Dr Evans-Appiah was saying.

He even told her to hand him a ‘thingie’ and she had to ask him what he meant.

‘Dr Evans-Appiah was very panicked,’ she told the hearing.

When Miss Thompson put ECG clamps on Darren’s arms, Mr Pedersen and Dr Evans-Appiah debated whether they were on properly.

Darren was taken to the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh, where he was pronounced dead.

Cross-examined by Christina Lambert, defending, Miss Thompson said there was a ‘very high turnover of staff’ at the clinic where the majority of staff were locum doctors supplied by agencies.

She said staff had no special training to deal with the crisis that developed, and Gareth Nicholson, the nurse specialising in anaesthetics was not present when the tragedy developed.

He only appeared when Miss Thompson was frantically calling for an ambulance, the hearing was told.

‘I can’t help as to why Gareth wasn’t there.

I didn’t know where he was,’ she said.

Miss Thompson added that he was one of the ‘main culprits’ for going missing from his job at the clinic.

Two days after the boy’s death, Evans-Appiah allegedly rang up Mr Thompson pretending he had closely monitored Darren during the extraction.

‘I felt that Dr Evans-Appiah was trying to say somebody had put the blood pressure cuff on.

I knew that wasn’t true,’ the nurse said.

Dr Evans-Appiah, of (7) Cambrian Road, Leyton, London, denies the gross professional misconduct charges.

The hearing continues.

ends