Swathi Satish root canal row: Dentist speaks up, ‘I have all the proof I need’

Dentist speaks up against actor Swathi Satish’s claims of medical negligence after root canal treatment allegedly goes wrong

Kannada actor and TV anchor Swathi Satish opened up about a medical mishap that took place on May 28, when she went to get her root canal treatment at Oryx Dental Multispecialty Dental Centre. Satish, who had been suffering from a swelling on her face post-treatment is on the path to recovery currently. “Even though I am recovering, one thing is still there. I didn’t get my proper lips shape back. I can’t smile perfectly and it’s been 23 days that I don’t have any sense in my lips. According to my current doctors, it may take another two weeks or a month to get back in shape,” Satish says. “My root canal treatment isn’t even completed because of the swelling currently,” she adds.

However, Dr Dhananjay Sanjay, the owner of the dental clinic claims that Swathi has recovered fully. “I have CCTV footage from the clinic to prove that the swelling on her face has gone and she’s doing completely fine right now. The photos that she has shared with the media are over 20 days old, from the first or second day of the swelling.”

Talking about what went wrong during the treatment, Satish alleges that Dr Dhananjay’s wife, Dr Mayuri, who treated the actor made a mistake during the procedure. “When I consulted another dentist for a second opinion, this is what I found out. The dentist who did my root canal procedure, first injected me with sodium hypochlorite at which point I screamed and started crying because it was extremely painful. Later, she injected anaesthesia. According to other doctors, it should’ve been done the other way around. The anaesthesia goes first and then the sodium hypochlorite,” she says.

To this, Dr Sanjay says, “We have videographic proof to show that the procedure was followed correctly and a local anaesthetic was used before the sodium hypochlorite. However, it may have been possible that at the time of injecting the sodium hypochlorite, some may have spilled out onto the nearby soft tissues which resulted in the inflammation. Now, this kind of an occurrence is quite common. Being in the field for over five years myself, I have seen such situations arise. Our job is to know how to deal with it, and the right way to do so is to make sure to take the right medications and anti-biotics, which we were providing to the patient. We understand that she may have been stressed or panicked at the moment, but we could not help her because she wasn’t ready to accept our help.”

According to Dr Sanjay, the FIR 6 to 6 actor came back to the clinic after a few days to ask for compensation. “She asked us to pay her one month’s worth of salary along with the cost of the root canal treatment, which came up to around ₹40,000. We denied her the compensation, and she decided to go public with this incident 23 days after it had occurred,” he says and adds, “She told us that the swelling will cause her to lose her job to which we offered to give her a medical certificate which advised her to take rest for 20 days, until it healed. However, she rejected the offer and publicly asked people to downrate my clinic on Google. Within the span of an hour, my five-star rating went down to a one-star rating. I had to take my clinic and address off the website. I have suffered a lot mentally because of what has happened. I did not want this to become a big situation, but if she decides to take the legal route, then I will do it as well because I have all the proof I need.”

Satish, on the other hand, claims that this mistake has cost her almost everything. “I lost my job, lost my orders and contracts for modelling, even a few TV series offers as well as movie offers.” When asked about taking any action against the clinic, she says, “I will let you know soon.”