A Florida woman was left with severe brain damage by a Texas dental clinic that tried to perform “unnecessary dental surgery” on her, according to a recent court filing from her husband.
Maria Lugo Querales, 53, now lives in a Florida neurological rehabilitation facility, where she receives round-the-clock care, including mechanical ventilation, artificial feeding, and hydration, the San Antonion Express-News reported.
The surgery she was to have never happened when the anethesia went awry. Lugo’s husband, Luis Espana, recently settled a lawsuit for an undisclosed amount with the anethesiologist, Dr. Jerry Teague, who died from pancreatic cancer two weeks after the incident.
Espana’s lawsuit against the Marble Falls dentists Nunnally, Freeman & Owens claims that the dentists can produce “no evidence on accepted sound, reliable and valid scientif medical knowledge or research that the surgery” scheduled on his wife in 2022 was necessary.
Espana has asked for a summary judgment, and a hearing is scheduled on Thursday. The dentists counter that “the treatment plan proposed to Mrs. Lugo was within accepted standards of care, thus creating a fact issue precluding summary judgment.”
Lugo learned about the Texas dentists through Dr. Ludwig Johnson, a social media influencer from her native Venezuela who had two of the dentists — Stuart Nunnally and Lane Freeman, who was to perform the surgery on Lugo — on his Instagram and YouTube videos and was convinced that many of her health ailments were because of “cavitations” and “root-canal treated” teeth.
In an affidavit, Espana said Lugo was convinced that “her lack of energy, depression, heart issues, rheumatoid arthritis, and thyroid issues were likely caused by her root canal-treated tooth and the spaces below her pulled teeth, which they called cavitations.”
Those claims have been disputed by the American Dental Association, the American Association of Endodontists, and the American Association for Dental, Oral and Cranofacial Research, which had a 2018 documentary called “Root Cause” about such claims — and included all three of the Nunnally, Freeman & Owens dentists — pulled from Netflix and Amazon.
The dentists, however, claim in their response to Espana’s lawsuit that there is research linking “systemic health consequences” to “root canal therapy.”
Espana claims that the Texas dentists — who had not met Lugo prior to her arrival in Texas for the surgery — did not adequately go over the potential risks and certainly did not tell her that the anesthesiologist — Teague — had gone missing the day before the surgery. He was located about 40 minutes after his wife reported him missing, which she said was because of “cognitive issues” from his cancer diagnosis.
The dentists have further tried to distance themselves from Teague, claiming he was a contract worker, although at the time he was listed as staff anesthesiologist.
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[Featured image: Maria Lugo Querales/GoFundMe]
