2 patients die at Gangnam dental clinic within 8 months; district conducts inspection

Gangnam-gu said Tuesday it conducted an on-site inspection immediately after learning that two patients had died at a dental implant clinic in southern Seoul within eight months, and that it had forwarded the results to the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

The district office made the announcement in a press release, adding that the incidents had exposed gaps in the current system for sharing information on medical accidents and that it had asked the government to reform the system.

The first patient died on Dec. 30 last year while undergoing an implant procedure at Clinic A in Gangnam-gu. A second patient died under similar circumstances at the same clinic on Aug. 3. The clinic is reported to have used narcotic sedatives and local anesthetics during the treatment of both patients.

Earlier, at a National Assembly Health and Welfare Committee session on Friday, People Power Party lawmaker Lee So-hee asked Health and Welfare Minister Jeong Eun-kyeong whether the local public health center had inspected the clinic. Jeong said she would look into the matter.

In its press release, Gangnam-gu said it had not received any separate notification at the time of the first incident and only became aware of it on Jan. 26 through media reports. It added that the clinic was subsequently included in a joint targeted inspection of dental clinics with high narcotic use, conducted in February together with the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety.

The district said it also learned of the second death through media reports on Aug. 14, conducted an unannounced joint inspection of the clinic with the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety on Tuesday and forwarded the findings to the Ministry of Health and Welfare on Monday. "The inspection covered the handling and storage of medical narcotics, maintenance of medical records, medical practitioners' licenses and qualifications, and facility standards — and no significant violations were found," it said.

Gangnam-gu said the current system has inherent limitations in allowing local public health centers to monitor serious medical accidents at clinic-level facilities in real time. It also said that administrative inspections by public health centers are designed to verify compliance with laws such as the Medical Service Act and the Narcotics Control Act, and are distinct from criminal investigations that assess causation between a patient's death and a medical procedure or determine whether medical staff were negligent.

The district called for reform of the existing medical accident information-sharing system in light of the incidents. It plans to recommend to the Ministry of Health and Welfare that a mechanism be established to promptly notify local governments when serious medical accidents occur at clinic-level facilities.

Gangnam-gu also plans to request that facility standards currently required for general anesthesia be extended to intravenous and sedation anesthesia, making patient monitoring devices and emergency equipment mandatory. In addition, it intends to supplement its existing biannual inspections of local medical institutions with quarterly focused inspections centered on areas closely tied to patient safety.