Grieving parents shelve Caleb’s Law rather than dilute it
It has become a familiar routine for the Sears family: Gather the medical experts, trek to Sacramento, and tell another panel of lawmakers how their 6-year-old son died from the anesthesia a dentist gave him to pull a tooth.
Then watch as legislators water down the solution that pediatricians insist would prevent other California children from dying the same way.
Each time, the Bay Area family accepted incremental changes as they kept working toward their goal: a new law to require that two highly trained medical professionals — instead of one — tend to children under age 7 who undergo anesthesia in a dentist’s office.
But after two years of advocacy, research and heart-wrenching public testimony, their appeal suffered a major defeat Monday when a Senate panel refused to vote for the family-backed bill.
Saying that moving ahead with a diluted version would do “incredible harm” to their effort to advance children’s safety, the assemblyman carrying the legislation opted instead to shelve the bill.
The decision effectively kills the bill for at least a year — and marks a win for Sacramento’s influential dental lobby.
“It’s a horrible disappointment,” Tim Sears said afterward, as he and his wife Eliza received hugs from friends and family in the hallway outside the hearing room.
Her face drawn with sadness, Eliza Sears remarked that “the battle here has been much more challenging and political and difficult than we ever could have realized.” Their son Caleb died in 2015 after the anesthesia he was given for an oral surgery caused him to stop breathing. Following Caleb’s death, the couple learned that oral surgeons are the only medical professionals allowed to both administer anesthesia and operate on a patient. The two complex duties are separated in hospitals so that one provider can monitor the patient’s response to anesthesia while the other performs surgery.
The Sears family set out to change the law to give very young children—already more susceptible to the risks involved in anesthesia—an extra layer of protection when they’re operated on in a dentist’s office. A pediatrician and Harvard anesthesiology professor who testified in favor of their bill likened the concept to commercial airplanes, where a pilot and co-pilot are equipped to handle emergencies.
If the dentist performing a surgery doesn’t have a highly-trained “co-pilot,” Dr. Charles Cote said, “there is no one there that can help rescue the child.”
The family’s effort to keep other Californians from experiencing their pain gained national attention this week, featured in a segment on NBC’s Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly. The California chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics backed the bill requiring oral surgeries on children to include a second highly-trained professional to monitor the response to anesthesia. A study by the state’s Dental Board— prompted by a bill the Sears family lobbied for last year—recommended the change too, along with further research on potential impacts. But the bill hit trouble in April when an Assembly committee weakened it by allowing lower-level technicians to assist dentists sedating young patients. The Sears family and the bill’s author, Democratic Assemblyman Tony Thurmond of Richmond, didn’t like the changes but moved ahead with the bill anyway. They proposed tougher amendments— specifying that the second provider must be another dentist, an anesthesiologist or a highly educated nurse—which they hoped the Senate panel would approve this week.
Instead, senators on the committee said they were unconvinced that the two-provider approach would save lives, citing two cases in the last year in which California toddlers died during oral surgery despite the presence of an anesthesia specialist.