Dental Stitches Left In and the Two-Year Malpractice Clock

Attorney Answer

Your real problem is not whether this was malpractice — it is the filing deadline, and four years of pain suggests the two-year clock may already have run. That question has to be answered first, because it decides whether the rest of the analysis is worth anything.

Texas treats a claim against an oral surgeon or dentist as a health care liability claim under Chapter 74 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 74.251(a) provides that no such claim may be commenced unless the action is filed within two years from the occurrence of the breach or tort or from the date the medical or health care treatment that is the subject of the claim or the hospitalization for which the claim is made is completed. Read that second measuring point carefully, because it is the one that may help you: if the course of treatment that is the subject of your claim continued past the extraction — through the weeks of pain and up to the removal of the stitches — the completion of that treatment, not the surgery date, may be the date that matters. That is a legal argument, not a certainty, and it needs a lawyer looking at your actual chart. Section 74.251(b) sets an outside limit of 10 years from the act or omission.

On the merits, the case would not be about the fact that you were left in pain. It would be about whether leaving the sutures in place, or failing to recognize and remove them when you reported the pain, fell below what a competent provider would have done, and whether that failure caused the nerve damage you now have rather than the extraction itself doing it. Nerve injury is a recognized risk of removing wisdom teeth even when the surgery is done well, so a claim usually has to separate the risk that materialized from the lapse that made it worse. That separation is expert work.

Which brings up the gate that ends most of these claims. Under § 74.351(a), a claimant must serve one or more expert reports, with the curriculum vitae of each expert, not later than the 120th day after the date each defendant's original answer is filed, for each provider sued. Section 74.351(b) requires the court, on the provider's motion, to dismiss the claim as to that provider with prejudice and to award reasonable attorney's fees and court costs when no report is served in time; § 74.351(c) allows one 30-day extension to cure a deficient report. Finding and preparing that expert takes months, which is the practical reason to move now.

If a claim is viable, Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 74.301 caps noneconomic damages at $250,000 per claimant against providers other than health care institutions, with $250,000 and $500,000 institution limits. Those numbers do not change with time. Your treatment costs, future care and lost income are not capped by that section.

What you can do

1. Request the complete dental and surgical records, including the operative note, the suture material used, every post-operative visit note, and the record of the visit where the stitches were removed.

2. Collect the records of the providers who have treated the nerve pain since, because those documents carry both the injury and the dates.

3. Write down the dates as best you can reconstruct them: the surgery, each call or visit about the pain, who you spoke to, and when the stitches came out.

4. Keep bills, receipts, pharmacy records and any record of work you have missed.

5. Take everything to a Texas medical malpractice attorney and ask specifically about the limitations date under § 74.251(a) before anything else, because a delay of weeks can decide this.

6. Do not sign a release or accept a refund in exchange for signing anything from the practice or its insurer before that review.

7. Most lawyers offer a brief initial call at no cost, and a few minutes on your specific facts with someone who can ask you questions is worth more than any general guidance, including this page.

⏱ Time limits apply. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 74.251(a) sets two years from the breach or from the completion of the treatment that is the subject of the claim, and § 74.251(b) imposes a 10-year statute of repose. Which date starts your two years — the extraction, or the completion of the after-care — is exactly the question a Texas attorney needs to answer from your records, and it is the difference between a case and no case. Nothing here computes a date for you.