HIV Risk For 7,000 Patients Feared Due To Dentist Unsanitary Practices

About 7,000 patients who visited a suburban Tulsa, Oklahoma, dentist in the past six years may have been exposed to HIV and hepatitis, health investigators say.

Investigators were left grasping for words to describe what they found inside W. Scott Harrington’s dental practice: Assistants did techniques that only a dentist should, and sterilization procedures and needles were handled improperly.

“I will tell you that when … we left, we were just physically kind of sick,” said Susan Rogers, executive director of the Oklahoma Board of Dentistry. “I mean, that’s how bad (it was), and I’ve seen a lot of bad stuff over the years.”

The state health department will offer free HIV and hepatitis testing to the thousands of patients who sat in Harrington’s chairs.

Joyce Baylor, who said she was Harrington’s patient in the past, said she heard about the health risk from a news report.

Baylor said she has not yet received a letter from health officials but she was going to see her doctor next week.

“The (dental) office was clean,” Baylor said. “I had no idea that things weren’t what they should have been.”

Harrington also allowed “unauthorized, unlicensed” employees to perform intravenous sedation of patients, Rogers said.

“That is completely unacceptable and illegal in Oklahoma,” she said.

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