LEICESTER, UK: In March 2005, a 38-year-old British soldier stationed in Germany lost his ability to form new memories after undergoing a regular root canal treatment. To this day, he is unable to remember anything for longer than 90 minutes, although his brain is completely intact and he suffered no trauma that could have caused the amnesia, according to his doctors.
“I remember getting into the chair and the dentist inserting the local anaesthetic,” the man, who wishes to remain anonymous, told the BBC. Since that moment, he remembers nothing. Every morning, he wakes up thinking that he is still a soldier stationed in Germany in 2005, waiting to visit the dentist for root canal surgery.
The German dentist only realised after the treatment, which was without complications, that something was wrong with the patient. He was pale, disoriented and struggled to stand up. As his condition did not improve, he was brought to hospital where he stayed for several days. In the beginning, he was not able to remember anything for longer than a few minutes.
The doctors’ first suspicion was that a bad reaction to the anaesthetic had caused a brain haemorrhage. However, they could not find any evidence of injury. Finally, the patient and his family returned to England, where Dr Gerald Burgess, a clinical psychologist from Leicester, took over the case.
According to Burgess, a form of anterograde amnesia would have been the most obvious explanation for the man’s condition. In this case, the hippocampi, the brain regions responsible for the consolidation of information from short-term memory to long-term memory, are damaged so that memories can no longer be formed and stored correctly. Yet, the man’s brain scans showed no abnormalities. Thus, another possible explanation would have been a psychogenic illness. Burgess conducted detailed psychiatric assessments in order to determine whether the man had suffered any trauma. However, Burgess found that his patient was emotionally healthy and his wife confirmed that there had not been any traumatic events in the man’s life prior to his dentist visit in 2005.
Burgess continues to research his patient’s rare case of amnesia, currently suspecting that the brain’s synapses might play an important role. Each time a memory is formed and transferred to long-term memory, the synapses are rebuilt, which involves the production of new proteins. This protein synthesis might be blocked in the case of Burgess’ patient, keeping him from generating any new long-term memories. In order to further research his hypothesis, Burgess is examining five similar cases of mysterious memory loss without brain damage from the medical literature. These cases might provide an answer to why the root canal treatment appears to have triggered the man’s memory loss. All of the cases are in some way related to a period of psychological stress during a medical emergency. “It could be a genetic predisposition that needs a catalyst event to start the process,” Burgess told the BBC.
“One of our reasons for writing up this individual’s case was that we had never seen anything like this before in our assessment clinics, and we do not know what to make of it, but felt an honest reporting of the facts as we assessed them was warranted, that perhaps there will be other cases, or people who know more than we do about what might have caused the patient’s amnesia,” Burgess stated.
The case report by Burgess, titled “Profound anterograde amnesia following routine anesthetic and dental procedure: A new classification of amnesia characterized by intermediate-to-late-stage consolidation failure?”, was published online in the Neurocase journal on 15 May.
LONDON, UK: A new method of detecting bacteria during root canal therapy could eradicate the need for follow-up appointments and prevent treatment failure, ...
LIVERPOOL – Researchers at the University of Liverpool are currently testing a new procedure to treat infected pulp. Revascularisation can be ...
LONDON & LIVERPOOL, UK: A Merseyside dentist sentenced for a number of child sex offences by the Liverpool Crown Court last year has been struck off the ...
VEVEY, Switzerland: Introduced by Swiss endodontic company Produits Dentaires (PD) at the 2019 International Dental Show, EssenSeal is an innovative sealer ...
The patient reported on in this article is a student in dentistry and his parents are both dentists. They referred their son to a good endodontist, who then...
A new generation of irrigation needle designed and manufactured by Swiss endodontic company PD (Produits Dentaires) enables more effective cleaning and ...
To make the wait for ROOTS SUMMIT 2024 a little sweeter, the organisers would like to spotlight some of the speakers for next year’s edition, which will ...
LYMPSHAM – According to a report released by the General Dental Council (GDC), a dentist from South West England has failed to maintain appropriate ...
LIVERPOOL – Owing to the absence of a uniform testing standard within the NHS, researchers have analysed a new test developed to classify ...
Through the UK’s impending exit from the European Union, much uncertainty has been created around the position of EU citizens in the country, ...
Live webinar
Fri. 19 July 2024
1:00 am UTC (London)
Live webinar
Tue. 6 August 2024
11:00 pm UTC (London)
Live webinar
Wed. 14 August 2024
12:00 am UTC (London)
Live webinar
Wed. 14 August 2024
5:30 pm UTC (London)
Live webinar
Wed. 21 August 2024
2:00 pm UTC (London)
Dr. Jim Lai DMD, MSc(Perio), EdD, FRCD(C)
Live webinar
Thu. 29 August 2024
1:00 am UTC (London)
Live webinar
Mon. 2 September 2024
10:00 am UTC (London)
My husband just completed his third treatment for a root canal. Since his first treatment he has within a couple of days had several bouts of memory loss, which is not normal for him. At first we didn’t take much notice of his forgetting things because they were only small things and we thought it was just his age, he’s 55 years old. However, since his last treatment this week, he has twice left something cooking on the stove, remembering about it whilst he is out (delayed memory). This behaviour is truly out-of-character for him.